


Darkside

by Gairid



Series: Odyssey [1]
Category: Vampire Chronicles - All Media Types, Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: M/M, New Orleans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-11
Updated: 2010-02-22
Packaged: 2017-10-07 04:26:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 39,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/61410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gairid/pseuds/Gairid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Darkside</i> chronicles the time period from 1990 when Brian came to work for Lestat and leads up to the rest of the Odyssey series (1995) (not yet posted here) which he (and others) also plays a part in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One - 1990

# 

Darkside

## 

Part One

## 

Late April, 1990

 

"Callahan, 75. Do you read? Over."

I lifted the radio mic from the hook and thumbed the button.

"75. I read. Over."

"Hey, Callahan, you speak French, don't you?"

I raised an eyebrow. One of the questions on the application I filled out to get the job asked if the applicant was fluent in any foreign language. I'd answered it yes, having learned the language from my Quebeçois mother. I took four years of it in high school to get the grammar down.

"Yeah, Dave. Over."

"Fluent? Over."

"Fluent. Over."

"Good. You got a pick-up in the Quarter to drop at Lakefront Airport. 1127 Royal, ASAP. Over."

"1127 Royal." I repeated. "Over."

I swerved the limo, narrowly missing an elderly pick-up that had blown the light on his corner.

"Brian, these guys are eccentric. Big money, but definitely strange. Get it? Over."

"Got it. Over."

"Put your cap on and button your jacket. The name's Lioncourt." Dave said, knowing full well the cap was on the seat beside me on top of the jacket. "Over and out."

Eccentric? Strange? In New Orleans? Big surprise there, I thought, hanging the mic back on its hook. I inched along in the clotted early evening traffic, taking any advantage I could to move along; in New Orleans traffic he who hesitates is lost. It took me a little longer than I would have liked, but the impatience I felt was mitigated when I arrived at the 1100 block of Royal and discovered the minor miracle of a parking spot directly in front of the client's address. I got out of the car and shrugged into the jacket and put the cap on.

The townhouse was typical for the area with evidence of recent work on the façade and a fresh coat of glossy black paint on the front door. There was an oxidized brass lion with a ring clamped in its mouth for a door knocker and for some reason I raised my hand to use that rather than pressing the bell. After two raps, the door swung inward as though someone had opened it, but there was no one there. I put my head in.

"_Monsieur Lioncourt_? Diamond Limousine." I called. "La porte était ouverte."

"_Ah, oui. Nous serons prêts bientôt. Veuillez prendre le bagage du foyer à votre voiture_."

A shadow cast from the top of the graceful staircase crossed the polished wood floor of the foyer.

"_Oui, monsieur_." I answered. I stepped inside to get the two bags at the bottom of the stairs, looking about curiously. It was always a surprise to walk into one of these older townhouses and see what their owners had done. The quick look around I allowed myself showed meticulous antique elegance.

When the cases were stowed, I closed the trunk and leaned on the car to wait. The air was heavy with moisture and the jacket and hat weren't helping matters any. I'd been in New Orleans for eight months; a Yankee transplant with a hopeless South Boston accent and a fervent passion for my newly adopted home.

New Orleans was heady, dreamlike. It was a place I could never have imagined in my family's cramped Southy apartment on freezing nights when the wind found its way through the cracks in the poorly constructed window frames and the radiators clanked crankily. I looked up at the balcony crowded with the shadows of ferns and flowers and in that time, on that night, it seemed impossibly lush and almost terrifyingly alien. The dense air was heavy with scents, each one more exotic than the next. Even the less-than-pleasant smells seemed exotic to me.

The door opened and I straightened up from my leaning position. For a brief moment my senses blurred and my thoughts fuzzed; the man that emerged blended perfectly into my otherworldly reverie. I shook my head once and passed the feeling off. It was easy enough to do, since the first thought had been followed by a rush of lust so strong it made me dizzy.

He was tall and well-built with a head of blond hair that seemed to shimmer beneath the streetlight. Killer smile, arresting eyes, and perfect, pale skin. His clothes looked expensive and tailored.

_"Monsieur Lioncourt? Je suis Brian. Je serai votre conducteur ce soir_."

"Good evening, Brian. Please call me Lestat." The Vision said in perfect English. "I apologize for our disarray. We are in a bit of a hurry and so I will also apologize in advance for the urgency I will surely press upon you during the drive."

After this confounding speech he laughed with what seemed to be genuine delight at his own words. I didn't really understand it but his laugh was so infectious that I found myself smiling at him. When his laughter tapered off he jerked a thumb toward the door.

"Louis will be along in a moment." he said, as though I knew who he was talking about. I was sort of used to that; clients often said inexplicable things and I'd learned to just nod politely. That's what I did this time and he erupted into laughter once again. Behind him I heard the door close.

"What has set you off this time, 'Stat?"

"Ah, Louis. Here is our driver, Brian, come to whisk us off to the airport. Brian, this is Louis."

"Pleased to meet you." I rasped. He nodded briefly.

He was as beautiful as Lestat, though in a completely different way. Thick, black hair framed a face that was paler than Lestat's.  
Maybe it was the lights. His eyes seemed to glitter when he raked them over me indifferently.

I collected my wits and opened the door for them. Louis ducked in first, doubling his long body gracefully and Lestat followed him, sliding in close and putting his arm around Louis' shoulders. Louis turned his head and licked the length of Lestat's jaw.

I swallowed, throat clicking dryly. "All set?"

Lestat nodded. "You will bring us to the private hangars, please."

"Private hangars, Lakefront Airport. Right."

I closed the door and walked around the front of the car, heart thudding madly. Once I got the car started and pulled away from the curb, I groped for the bottle of water in the cup holder and drank the entire thing.

I got them to the airport with time to spare and followed them into the small waiting area with their bags. After conferring for a moment with one of the women in the office, Lestat turned to me.

"Thank you, Brian." he said, pressing some bills into my hand. "We shall be back here in six days, a little after midnight. If you would be so kind as to pick us up then? "

"Six days. Got it." I put the bills he'd given me in my pocket and pulled out the little notebook I kept to write in the time and date. "_Merci beaucoup et bon voyage, messieurs_."

He nodded and behind him I saw Louis gazing at me, his eyes flat and expressionless. Lestat turned to him and the blank look fled, replaced by deep, affectionate warmth. They linked arms and went out the door onto the tarmac.

It wasn't until my shift ended and I stopped at a convenience store for another bottle of water that I found out that Lestat had tipped me with five one hundred dollar bills.

~~~~~

>   
>  _That was the beginning of my odyssey and, to quote the Dead, what a long, strange trip it's been and continues to be. They are no less fascinating to me now than they were then, but I see them differently now. They are beautiful and they are powerfully strong. They can be terrifying and they can be tender, but as Lestat so often insists they are not angels, they are vampires. Does it make them evil? I don't know; certainly they have committed acts that might be so interpreted by human beings; however, they are no longer human and their motivations are necessarily not human either._
> 
> At least most of their motivations are not. They remain curiously human in some ways, at least these two do. They love one another and they have hurt one another deeply and repeatedly because of it, the same way that humans will, repeating mistakes over and over again.. I suppose when you have so much time, the mistakes are magnified and the pain is deeper, but there is also the time to make things right and to attend to one another properly. If it's taken them two centuries to get it right, well, it's a lot faster than some of the others that are like they are; as far as I know, none of them has managed it.
> 
> __
> 
> Thinking about all this planted the idea in my head to write down what I remember of how things were at the start, when I first came to work for them. I guess I caught the bug of writing down events that happen from Lestat but I never really did write down how things were at the beginning except as mentions in later reminiscences. I avoided it because some of it was not pretty, not at all. I saw things about them that I didn't want to see because it interfered with the mindset that at that time, anyway, kept me functioning and as sane as it's possible to be around creatures such as they.
> 
> __
> 
> Another thing Lestat often points out is that humans are adaptable and resilient, even if they break pretty easily.True enough, I guess. Things changed and I changed as well. Am I crazy? Maybe. Probably, even, but I wouldn't trade my life for a 'normal' one. Seeing the flawed side of the creatures I revere made it so I earned more of their trust.
> 
> __
> 
> I wouldn't trade any of it.
> 
> __
> 
> B.Callahan, 2005
> 
> __   
> 

 

## 

Early July, 1990

I was supposed to drive them to a party out by Morgan City. Although Morgan City wasn't much of a place, I knew there were some pretty rich folks that lived out that way, cloistered behind electrified fences and out of sight of the roads by virtue of winding driveways and strategic landscaping.

I made my way down Esplanade and turned onto Royal, giddy with excitement. It was a ridiculous crush, I knew it was, but whenever I was directed to their place my stomach fluttered madly and I had to work hard to suppress a big, goofy grin. No chance at all and I knew it and it's not like _that_ hasn't happened before. I didn't usually have a problem with that kind of thing because there's always someone that's unattached, always someone to hook up with for an hour or a night, or sometimes longer.

With Lestat, though, it was like being hypnotized or something. It would have been embarrassing if anyone knew about it, but I hadn't mentioned it to anyone.

Then there were the outrageous tips he gave me. The first time I'd held on to the five hundred, certain that it'd been a mistake, and when I picked them up at the airport a week later as directed, I tried to give it back to him. He'd only laughed and said it hadn't been a mistake and he wouldn't hear of taking it back. Those two trips alone had more than covered the rent for my tiny, cramped flat on Iberville.

There was more to it, though. I couldn't put my finger on it in a way that made any sort of concrete sense, but it was more than just butterflies in the stomach, yeah? Sometimes there was real unease. Not an awkwardness because of the crush, but something that brought up the hair on the back of my neck in a way that should only happen when a guy's in some kind of real danger. It was weird, that feeling, because Lestat was unfailingly friendly to me and Louis was aloof to the point where I felt invisible. Not a great feeling, I guess, but nothing that should make me feel threatened.

I had the stretch for them, as requested, and I wondered if they'd even bother to leave the back when I got them out to their destination. The last time I'd picked them up, Lestat instructed me to go to an address in Baton Rouge, but when I got there and opened the door they'd been mostly naked and twined around each other like vines. I stood gaping for a pretty long time before Lestat left off kissing Louis for a moment to suggest that perhaps I might give them some privacy and that they had decided not to attend the soiree after all, so I would I please just drive back to New Orleans?

This time they went to the party and I dozed on and off in the car while I waited. One of the women who were catering the party came out at one point to give me a plate of food and passed a few minutes talking to me while she smoked a cigarette.

"You're Mr. Lioncourt's driver?"

I nodded, unable to speak through the mouthful of shrimp étouffée.

"Lucky you." she said dreamily. "So handsome. He's real nice, too."

I'd managed to swallow. "Yeah. He's a good client."

"Too bad he's one-a them gayboys. How's the food?"

"Food's great." It was. And I was sincerely glad when she finished her smoke and went back inside.

When they came out sometime around 3 a.m., I held the door open for them and once again I got that feeling, a sort of dread that kicks up your adrenaline. Lestat was already in the car, pulling playfully at Louis' hand, but Louis wasn't moving to get in with him. Instead, he was leaning toward me, mouth slightly open. The feeling of danger increased and I took an involuntary step back.

"You pay attention to your instincts." he said, as though he knew exactly what I'd been feeling. It was the first time he'd addressed me directly since I'd begun driving them. "That's a good thing. Perhaps Lestat is right about you."

He got into the car and I shut the door, leaning back on the car for a moment to try and reason away the feeling that he'd somehow read my mind.

Because that couldn't be, could it?

 

## 

Mid-August, 1990

 

I opened the car door expecting, by this time, that I would be greeted by the pair of them in a clinch, possibly undressed, but not necessarily so.

They were dressed. They were in a clinch, too, Lestat's face buried beneath Louis' chin and so I started to close the door. Lestat raised his head and I took a galvanic step backward, nearly falling on my ass because what I saw was a dripping, red grin and his eyes blazing blue fire at me. The gaping wound at Louis' throat was purplish red, lurid in the yellow light cast by the dome light.

"We're not ready just yet." Louis rasped gutturally.

Lestat's tongue darted and twisted in his mouth, licking at his teeth and his lips.

Licking at his fangs.

I shut the door.

It was a good thing that driving in New Orleans was second nature to me by that time because I had a difficult time concentrating after what I had just witnessed. It was one thing to idly contemplate just what it was that was so different about them and the word 'vampire' had crossed my mind more than once during such ruminations. It was another thing altogether to see the ferocity that is not always attached to the word, romanticized as it has become.

The divider window opened and Lestat leaned through it.

"You can bring us back to the casino now." he said affably. "I'm afraid we got a little carried away."

I nodded, speechless.

 

## 

Mid-August 1990 – The Next Day

 

I sat at the end of the bar, hunched over my drink. I'd had several already, even though it was only early afternoon. It didn't matter; I was off for the next three days and it seemed like a good time to go on a binge.

So far though, neither the drinks nor the loud music was having much of a dampening effect on my racing thoughts. They were curiously circular, possibilities that presented and re-presented themselves, forcing me to one conclusion.

I could have hallucinated the scene in the back of the limo. But I hadn't.

They were really deep into some kink that I didn't have a name for. Except, I knew that wasn't it.

They were vampires.

And to that, well—-yeah.

Because there was all that blood, but when I dropped them off, there was no longer a wound in Louis' throat; the skin there had been pristine. His clothes were another story, dark with blood, but his neck? Nothing.

And the fangs. Let's not forget those. Lethal, sharply wicked teeth, stained crimson.

Sort of explains those feelings of danger, too.

Yeah.

And the fact that they only went out at night.

I signaled for another drink.

 

## 

Early September, 1990

 

"I wondered if you'd be back." Lestat greeted me.

"Yeah. Me, too." I said.

"I believe I will ride in the front with you."

"Your call, _monsieur_." I opened the passenger door in front and he slid in.

"So formal, you." he said when I got in and started the car. "Tell me something. Did you come back because of the money?"

I looked at my hands, steady because they were gripping the steering wheel.

"No." I said in a low voice.

"Why then?"

I smiled tentatively.

"You did request that I drive you to your meeting tonight, right?"

It must have been the right answer, because his rich laughter filled the car as I pulled away from the curb.

 

## 

Late October, 1990

 

"So, what do you think? The choice is yours, of course." Lestat said.

"Sounds too good to be true." I said.

"It's a generous salary." he agreed, "But you would be at our beck and call as they say. At night, anyway."

Crazy, I thought. I'd be crazy to do this and just as crazy not to. He was offering me three times what I was making driving for Diamond Limo.

"I'll hand in my notice tonight." I told him. Lestat extended his hand and we shook on it. His hand was smooth and cool and curiously hard in a way that I could not quite explain. He didn't give me time for contemplation about the texture of his skin, however. Releasing my hand, he leaned close to me.

"Are you sure you want to do this? I can be difficult at times." He smiled broadly and the light caught his fangs, glinting on the evil points. He dipped his head closer, sniffing delicately. "You seem nervous."

Was I scared? Damn right I was; terrified might not be too far off the mark, actually, but there was more to it. There was the invitation to glimpse something that I was willing to bet not too many people ever saw. There was his unearthly beauty and there was his beguiling charm and there was the distinct challenge in his voice.

He said the choice was mine. I wonder if he really believed that I could have chosen differently.

"I'm sure." I told him, making a concerted effort to regulate my breathing and remain still when his face was so close to mine that I felt some of the golden strands of his hair whisper across my jaw.

(Next: 1992)


	2. Part Two - 1991

## 

Darkside

### 

Part Two  
January, 1991

"If you are amenable, we think that it might be more convenient for all of us if you were a little closer to hand." Lestat said.

The 'we' did not ring very true, somehow. Louis sat across the room, remote and unmoving. Only the slight movement of his eyes betrayed any life in him at all.

"Closer?" I asked. I lived only blocks away and it didn't take me long to get to Royal St. if they needed me.

"You have mentioned that you would like to be of some help in other ways, yes?"

I had, because I felt like I was being vastly overpaid for the occasional drive to the airport or a club or the movies. I nodded.

"_Très bien_. There is a small dwelling behind the townhouse here, across the courtyard. With a little work it would be habitable and near to hand. I would like to install a phone system so that you might take phone calls, since the world generally operates during the day. I find listening to endless messages tedious at best. Weed through the heaps of mail. Manage things, so to speak."

And so I took on these things and was given carte blanche to have the little house in the back remodeled within to my liking. The structure itself was sound, but it was made more spacious by the removal of a wall and the addition of a wider window. Lestat would come in the evening to inspect the work and give suggestions, some of which were outrageous (a marble tub that would have needed massive support from beneath) and others that were inspired, such as removing the plaster from walls to expose the mortar and brick beneath.

Louis often accompanied him on these little tours and it was obvious that his interest did not lay in what work was being done, but rather in the delight Lestat took in the proceedings. He remained aloof toward me, only addressing me occasionally. After a while I stopped fretting over what I might have done to offend him, treating him with a somewhat exaggerated courtesy to cover my own unease.

 

### 

February, 1991

 

While the work was being done I remained in my little flat on Iberville, packing what belongings I'd managed to collect before I started raking in what seemed to me to be an unbelievable amount of money. I sent some of what I was now making to my mother with the hope that they would use it to get out of Old Harbor. I put no conditions on what I sent, of course, and they remained right where they were. I mortified them to their Irish and French-Catholic souls, the gay son and all, but apparently not to the point that they considered refusing what I sent.

It was carnival season and Lestat and Louis had left New Orleans, preferring somewhere quieter. I guess they'd seen enough parades and crowds in their time. I had a phone number in Paris should I need to contact them and I went over to Royal St. daily to check on the work being done and to collect the mail and the phone messages. I spent the evenings roaming the crowds, caught up in the spectacle of Mardi Gras. The frenzy of Bourbon St. was only part of it, a display of almost forced debauchery that did not reflect the scope of pageantry and love of flair that native New Orleanians possessed, but it was still all new to me, an experience I swallowed whole, partying the nights away down on Bourbon and St. Ann's and doing my best to recover during the day. It was almost a relief when Ash Wednesday came and I had a little time to detoxify.

Lestat had not given a firm return date, so I was assiduous about checking my answering machine at home as well as the one in their flat. I also had a mobile phone that I carried with me wherever I went, though the reception on it was spotty much of the time. At any rate there was every possibility that Lestat had already misplaced the one he'd taken with him.

By the end of the month, I'd heard from Lestat only once, and that to say that they were enjoying Paris and had decided to stay on for a little longer. My new home was ready by the twenty-seventh and I'd spent the day moving my belongings in. The weather was good, cool and crisp, especially as evening came on and I took a beer with me out to the front porch that looked across the courtyard to the back of their townhouse.

"You are comfortable here, I see." Louis' voice was soft and inflectionless and it was within inches of my ear. I started violently, leaping to my feet as though I'd been zapped with a cattle prod.

"_Monsieur! Vous m'avez effrayé. Comment êtes-vous devenu à la maison_?" I was babbling, partly from fear and partly from consternation at not having been ready to pick them up.

"It does not matter how I got here. You haven't missed a call; Lestat is still in Paris. Sit down, if you please. Try not to speak."

I was completely at a loss for words and my legs were rubbery with reaction so I simply did as he directed.

"A fortunate turn of events, is it not? You have, as they say, come up in the world somewhat. And now we have a little time to ourselves to get to know one another." Louis disengaged himself from the shadows and leaned against the porch rail. "You can tell me all about your life, your dreams and expectations. A traumatic childhood, perhaps? Is this not what mortals discuss to death these days? " His scornful voice was a cover for something darker simmering beneath; menace oozed from him and I tried desperately to think of something to say that might diffuse his antagonism.

"On second thought, I shall just say what I came to say. I think that would be better. I already know a good deal about you, you see." He tapped his teeth with a shining nail. "Lestat has taken a liking to you and so you are here at his largesse. I have no quarrel with his decision as such. There would be no point, you see, for he will always do just as he pleases. I would ask you why you wished to stay. You are not a craven man, nor do you seem to be a foolish one, yet you go against that very instinct that tells you that you are not safe. Why?"

I had come to some sort of point with him, some sort of crossroads, and the same instinct he had referred to was warning me now not to panic, but to answer carefully.

"It's _because_ he is dangerous. Because I heard something in his voice. I want to see what he's like behind that." I raised my eyes nervously and looked at him, so smooth and white; so deadly and so focused.

"Do you suppose that you have some place in his life?"

"Maybe. I mean, because I work for him. For both of you."

"Please dispense with the flattery. It isn't necessary. I will be blunt. I do not trust you. I will not trust you until I see some reason that I should. Putting you in the back garden might incur some slight risk to his person and I tell you now that should you ever think to do him harm in any way, should you ever think to betray him for any reason you will have to answer to me."

The threat in his tone was implicit, though he had not promised any particular consequences.

"Fair enough." I said, gathering up what scraps of dignity I could under the circumstances. "You have no reason to trust me, of course, but maybe you should know that I didn't agree to come here with the idea that keeping these—these secrets to myself was going to be easy. I didn't come here because of the money, either." He could read what he liked into what I said. I was scared, but his coldness pricked me. "I came here because I want to see what no one else sees in him and in you."

He reached and gripped me painfully around the bicep, pulling me to my feet.

"I don't care what your reasons are, mortal." he said, baring his teeth. His voice was utterly inhuman. "I care only that he is not harmed. Not the least hair of his head. Not so much as the wrong questions directed to him because of some inadvertent slip of your tongue when you have had too many drinks taken. Mark me. You will answer to me."

I nodded, mute with shock.

"I see now that we understand one another." he said and his voice was normal, almost friendly. He released my arm, and plucked at the sleeve of my shirt as though to smooth it. "And now that we have got that bit of business taken care of, I shall be on my way back to Paris."

I opened my mouth to speak but nothing came out. He cocked his head and raised his eyebrows and I tried again.

"Just let me get my shoes and I'll drive you to the airport." I croaked.

 

### 

April, 1991

 

I punched in the code on the new electronic security lock on the carriageway gate and when the lock released I opened it up, pleased at the way the gate swung easily and soundlessly on the reinforced hinges. The gate itself was also reinforced steel, though you couldn't tell by looking at it; it had the look and feel of wrought iron. It was, in fact, an exact replica of the original gate, now installed in the wall between the courtyard behind their townhouse and the one next door, which they also owned.

It was with these mundane thoughts about the security system that I let myself into the courtyard to walk through the garden to my little house. I closed the thick cypress door behind me and locked it with the heavy, long-barreled key. Not state of the art, perhaps, but Lestat wouldn't hear of replacing it. A few steps into the garden, I heard a something, a low, guttural sound somewhere between a moan and a snarl and I froze in my tracks, the hair rising stiffly at the back of my neck.

I stood quite still, eyes straining and breath held. I saw only moving shadows, but I still heard sounds, panting gasps and a tight, urgent whisper. I pinpointed their position, relaxing somewhat as I realized what was going on. The fear was being rapidly replaced with the idea that it was probably a good idea if I just minded my own business and went on to my place. Another gasp and then a rising coughing snarl that grew louder and louder until I staggered back, stopping my ears.

I saw a streak of white, followed by another as they crashed through the vined lattice that screened their back patio. I was knocked backward, hitting my head against the bricks when someone's leg glanced off my calf as they rolled across the ground, clawing and struggling against one another. Lestat uttered a stream of obscenities as he grappled with Louis, nails digging red furrows into Louis' back. The litany was stemmed when their mouths met in a brutal clash.

The ferocity of the last few moments abated somewhat as they kissed and Louis ran his hands down Lestat's ribs, coming to rest at his hips. He rolled onto his back and Lestat rose up over him, scarlet lips torn and bleeding. His smile should have been ghastly, but somehow, it was not. I sat where I'd slumped with my back against the wall, still stunned from the blow to my head and I watched them, not six feet from me.

"And now, I claim that fine ass of yours, my love." Louis said lazily, his hands still on Lestat's hip bones. Lestat swiped his fangs across his palm and reached between his legs to slick Louis' cock. He shifted his legs somewhat and positioned himself over Louis, sinking down slowly and hissing as he took Louis into his body. Louis snatched at Lestat's bleeding hand and battened onto the wound even as he thrust his hips upward.

"Ah, Louis mine." Lestat breathed, eyes closed as Louis let go of his hand and he leaned back to increase the angle of penetration, holding his body in a way that no human would have been able to.

The pain from the blow to my head was still there, but distant and unimportant; all I could do was watch them, awash in a sort of lustful worship that made the blood and torn flesh and the increasingly savage way Louis pounded into Lestat all holy things, mysteries revealed to unwitting mortal eyes.

 

### 

May 1991

 

"If you don't have any plans, I should like to take you to dinner." Lestat said. "It's your birthday, isn't it?"

"Dinner?" I said, blinking stupidly.

"He does not mean that you will be the dinner." Louis said acerbically. He had warmed to me somewhat, though what I had done to earn it I could not tell.

"Where shall we go?" Lestat said.

"If you don't mind, I will stay here." Louis said.

"He doesn't care for cooking odors." Lestat confided to me, putting a friendly arm about my shoulders and giving a brief squeeze.

We ended up at Petunia's where the food was rich and delicious and Lestat kept the wine coming. Since he didn't drink wine, I took up the slack, attending to his glass as well as my own. The alcohol made me less nervous and more able to look at him for more than a minute or two without having to shift my gaze. It might have been that he was making a concentrated effort to appear very human.

He asked me questions about everything I tasted, pushing me to describe in detail the textures and tastes and seeming to take some satisfaction in my earnest answers. It was the first time I'd actually spent any amount of one-on-one time with him and I was seeing a side that I hadn't guessed at. His questions were almost wistful at times, confounding at others and his passing remarks about the other people around us were intensely amusing.

The conversation turned to my position with them and he remarked that he was pleased at not having to deal directly with so many mundane details.

"I guess Louis must be pleased, too." I said, pushing my plate away. I was absolutely stuffed.

Lestat chuckled. "Louis has no interest in such matters. I suppose that he is pleased that I have passed the cup to you. What brought Louis to mind?"

I shifted in my chair, suddenly uncomfortable. The waiter stopped at our table for perhaps the tenth time to ask if we needed anything, directing his question rather fawningly at Lestat. Lestat waved him off absently, folding his beautiful hands on the table before him and leaning forward to hear my answer.

"It's just that he seems to have thawed a little where I am concerned."

"Ah. That was because of your reaction when you came upon us en flagrante that time."

Reaction?" I wondered what he meant, because my only reaction had been to rap my head and watch them in a sort of daze. "I didn't say anything. Did I?"

"You didn't have to." Lestat said. "He heard your thoughts. We can do that, you know. Now then. Dessert?"

"No, thank you. I'm full." I said. "You can read my mind?"

I said this last in a breathless sort of way and my wine-fuzzed brain rattled on, wondering just what sort of nonsense they knew about me and how much of a fool I'd made of myself to date with my Lestat-inspired daydreaming.

"Relax. It's nothing as clear as you might think. More like picking up impressions. Sometimes it's more distinct. You were pretty transparent that night, though. This bothers you?"

"It's a little weird." I admitted.

"You don't know the half of it."

I suppose that was his way of trying to reassure me

"No, I guess I don't. Can I ask you something?"

"Please." He invited.

"How long, you know, how long have you been--"

"Ah. You really don't know. Two hundred and eleven years, shy a few months."

I stared at him.

"It's not long compared to some, but quite a lot has happened as you can imagine."

 

~~~~~~~

 

I woke up the next afternoon with a mother of a headache and when I got up to hunt down some aspirin I saw a book on the table beside my bed. It was titled The Vampire Lestat. There was a scrawled note tucked into it.

> Read with a grain or two of salt.  
>  LdL

 

### 

October, 1991

 

Sometimes, when I let myself into the townhouse to go upstairs and attend to things in the office, I took a few minutes to look around. Their home is filled with beautiful things of course, costly antiques that Lestat told me were similar to or the same as many of the items they had here in their early days together. I was learning just by being there, finding my interest piqued by things I would have otherwise never known anything about. Architectural details for one, and on that subject there were several books in the library on the first floor.

Nothing in that library about antiques, but I was learning about that, too; my current amour owned one of the many antique shops on Royal and in between some pretty good sex he was giving me a good education in his specialty, which happened to be eighteenth and nineteenth century furnishings.

I stood in the hallway at the top of the graceful staircase looking up at the portrait on the wall. Lestat had only recently unearthed it from storage and hung it and it was an object of fascination to me. In it, Louis sat in the foreground with his right hand clutching the arm of the straight backed chair he occupied, the left quiescent upon his thigh, fingers curled slightly in a relaxed manner. He wore a sober but elegant jacket of midnight blue, the sleeves and pocket flaps edged with narrow gold trim in a floral pattern; a small fall of lace graced his throat and brushed his hands. His waistcoat was burgundy embellished with leaves of gold and his breeches were black. He sat with one booted foot extended forward, the other with the heel touching the leg of the chair. His black hair hung loose and full over his shoulders and his expression was distant. There was a fluted column on the far right and a portico that gave an outside view of a quarter moon sailing in a scud of ragged clouds.

Lestat stood behind him, his beringed right hand on Louis' left shoulder. His left hand rode negligently on his hip, pushing his jacket back in such a way that the long line of his thigh was accentuated. In contrast to Louis, Lestat's clothes were a study in exuberant excess. His jacket was a patterned peacock blue with deeply cuffed sleeves and the waistcoat he wore beneath was made from bright gold cloth, lavishly embroidered with seed pearls. Blindingly white lace frothed at his throat and fell from beneath the cuffs of his jacket to cover his knuckles. His breeches were a paler shade of gold, complimenting the waistcoat and he wore buckled shoes on his feet. His expression was one of repressed mirth, though the artist seemed to have caught something malignant in his eyes, focused and narrowed as they looked in the painting. A pair of crossed sabers hung on the wall to his left and beneath them hung a heraldic shield, presumably the Lioncourt crest. I could make out a rampant lion on the right bottom quarter and a trio of fleur di lis on the top left.

A bar of mellow sunlight crossed the gleaming wood floor of the hallway, cast from the window in the parlor behind me, and the reflection of that light gave the colors in the painting a muted glow. It was a shame that no one would ever see Lestat's hair touched by the sun except in a painting such as this, that no one would ever see Louis' face in the bright daylight.

I left off my contemplation of the portrait and went to the office, but I found myself unable to focus on the work I had to do, thinking instead of the expression in Lestat's eyes, captured in oils so long ago. The artist, whoever he was, had clearly seen something there. Was the malevolence directed at him or was this painting done after one of their more spectacular arguments?

By this time I had read Louis' book and the second one that Lestat had dictated to a ghost writer, marketing the books as novels and though I took them with the grains of salt as advised, there were also grains of truth to be seen in the books. Lestat's narrowed eyes and the covetous, possessive hand that seemed to lie heavily upon Louis' shoulder as well as Louis' distant expression in the portrait seemed to reinforce this impression and I wondered what it was they had not said in their tales that had torn them apart when they so clearly belonged together.

 

### 

November 1991

 

"We're not going." Lestat snapped from upstairs when I let myself in the front door. His peremptory tone suggested that all was not well. The evening had been planned several months before; a fund-raiser for one of the endowment foundations they sponsored. Their presence was by no means mandatory, but it could be taken as a slight by some of the attendees. I'd learned very quickly that the very rich liked to be courted and coddled out of their money, tax deduction or not. I went upstairs.

Lestat paced the hallway restlessly, tension evident in the set of his shoulders and the clenched muscles of his jaw. "Louis has decided he has something else to do tonight and never mind that he's known about this for months." He glared at me as though I might somehow be complicit in Louis's decision. I refrained from saying that Louis didn't keep track of such things when their lives were running smoothly, much less when they were not. The growing dissonance between them in the last several weeks had become difficult to ignore or to put down to some sort of misunderstanding. I didn't feel comfortable asking Lestat about it, especially when he was exhibiting his more predatory side. Like now, muttering to himself and occasionally snapping his jaws together as though he might trap some of his frustrated annoyance between them and bite it in two.

"What are you standing about for?" he demanded. "I told you we aren't going."

"Yes, I understand." I said carefully. "Do you want me to bring the check you were supposed to present over there? I can give it to Mr. Gibeault; he can take up the slack and soothe any ruffled feathers."

"Yes, that's fine. Do that." He waved dismissively toward the door.

I got the check from the office and wordlessly handed it to him with a pen for him to sign it with. He did so, leaning over the little table that stood beneath their portrait. I took it and put it carefully into the inner pocked of my jacket. "Right. I'm off. Will you need me for anything else?"

He grunted and I took that as a 'no'. I had my hand on the doorknob when he spoke from the top of the stairs.

"Whatever happens, I am depending on you to keep things in order here, Brian."

I saw only his shadow from where I stood. I wanted to ask him what he meant by that, why things might be different, but his shadow moved and I heard the door to the office snick shut.

 

NEXT: 1992


	3. Part Three - 1992

## 

Darkside  
Part Three

 

### 

March 1992

When I let myself into the house during the day I tended to move quietly. Louis was not always in the house anymore, not since Lestat left, but I was quiet anyway, just in case. He was restless, see, even in the grip of the deathsleep and that was something that I was not accustomed to because it never happened when they were together.

He did not occupy the bedroom they always used when he did stay in the house, instead sleeping on the floor of the library or the guest room. Some days he lay there just out of reach of the sun's rays, having left the shutters open and I would step around him gingerly to close them and pull the blackout shades and draperies. After a while I nailed up blankets in these rooms and he did not bother to remove them.

As for me, I suppose I suffered from a mild sort of depression and not a little baffled anger of my own. Part of it was my feeling for Lestat and the unrealistic disappointment I felt at his abrupt departure, but something else had happened when I saw how Louis suffered. He made no particular effort to hide his pain, but neither did he display it in any way. He was elusive at night, though he would appear occasionally to exchange some terse words with me while he signed whatever stacks of papers and checks had built up. He did not refer at all to Lestat and I did not dare to ask, but I saw it anyway. He was gaunt and drawn and I knew that he was likely not feeding until he was driven to it by instinct alone.

It was warm already, another in a string of days too hot for this time of the year and when I came in the back door into the kitchen of the townhouse, I closed it behind me gratefully. Just the short walk across the stifling courtyard caused me to break into a light sweat. I paused at the fridge to get a bottle of water to take upstairs with me. The fridge held water and beer and soft drinks for the odd occasion when someone might stop by and there was need to offer something. No one came by these days, not with Lestat gone. Louis wasn't one to bother with mortals much.

I checked the rooms to see if he was about but they were all empty. This happened more and more of late and he'd told me he was staying in a house on a property they owned in the Garden District. I knew where it was, an overgrown little shotgun house with no electricity or running water, moldering away at the back of a deep, overgrown lot. I never went there because I knew he didn't want to be disturbed. If he wanted me for anything, he would let me know one way or another. I assumed that he was there and I went into the office to check the messages on the answering machine and work on winnowing through the stack of mail.

I was at work for maybe a half an hour when I heard a noise, a grating sort of wail like the agonized squeal of rusted hinges being forced open. I sat very still, ears straining to try and ascertain where the sound had come from. I heard the dim clip-clop of hooves passing on the street below the closed window and the soft hum of the air conditioning. After a minute or so of listening, I stood, knees creaking and muscles tense with adrenalin and when I took a step toward the door, I heard it again, louder this time, followed by the sound of something heavy falling. The sound came from above, from the attic crawl space. I made myself move to go see what was going on up there.

The arc of weak yellow light cast by the bare bulb on one of the roof beams did very little to illuminate the further recesses of the space. There were trunks and boxes, all liberally coated with dust, as well as furniture, most of it draped with sheets. It was ferociously hot. There was not enough room to stand upright, so I duck-walked with my head forward. The heat was tremendous and I was sweating freely, the drops stinging my eyes and making dark spots where they fell on the dusty floor. Nothing seemed to be out of place, but I couldn't swear to it, since I rarely had a reason to come up here. In spite of the heat I lingered there, feeling that something was dreadfully wrong. My eyes became accustomed to the dimness in the further portions of the space, and like flipping a switch, I saw that what had at first looked like an indistinguishable mound of sheets fallen perhaps from the tumble of upended chairs beyond was, in fact, a body.

It was Louis, sleeping up here in that thick, explosive heat with only a few inches of wood and flashing and slate between him and the murderous Louisiana sun. Another sound, this one a soft, moaning wail and of course it was him because who else could it be? I had never heard him make a sound during the day, never mind such a sound of distraught pain. Unable to help myself, I moved closer, abandoning the awkward position and instead crawling forward on my hands and knees.

His eyes were open. Not the slitted wet glitter I had seen upon occasion when I would look in on them before Lestat had gone away, but wide open, rolling in tormented distress. When his head turned and he looked at me, I backed away in confused fear, breath coming in short, tearing gasps. His face was slicked redly with bloodsweat, his arms bleeding where he had very obviously torn at his own flesh.

"Leave me, mortal. Leave or die." His voice grated harshly as though torn from him. I skittered backward out of his immediate reach. What was this? How was he awake? He groaned and the sound escalated into a spiraling, grief-stricken cry and his body shuddered, trembling, arching in some awful pain that I could not fathom, did not understand.

"_Sortez. Sortez_!"

And I did, nearly falling through the open trap in the floor, snatching at the folding ladder with panicky fingers. I sat still, trying to control my breathing and get my racing heart under control. I was horrified at the depth of his pain and the obvious grief and I jumped at each sound I heard from above, thinking he would come down and -- and what? Kill me? He would have done that in the attic if that was what he wanted. I was afraid that he would kill himself, immolate himself in the sun.

I sat with my back against the wall in the hallway for the duration of the afternoon, watching the ladder and listening to the occasional agonized sounds from above. At sunset he rose and I heard him take several lurching steps to the ladder which he did not use, instead jumping from above and landing heavily on his feet. His expression was blank, his eyes cold and distant. "I will be gone for some time and I do not wish to be disturbed. Carry on with seeing to things if you will; I will have the lawyers extend Power of Attorney to you for the interim."

"What has happened? What?" I couldn't help myself. I touched his dusty sleeve.

He shrugged me off and walked to the stairs without looking at me, but he paused before he descended.

"He has gone. Gone to the sun, though I don't-- I don't think he is dead." He went down the stairs and I heard the door close as he left the house.

 

### 

June, 1992

 

"It doesn't matter what you believe, Mr. Gibeault. What matters is that _Monsieur_ Pointe du Lac's wishes be followed and he has made it clear in no uncertain terms that I have POA in these aspects of their business dealings. He spoke directly to you on this point, I believe."

My head ached and I felt much less sure than I may have sounded. Gibeault's lack of respect didn't bother me; I even understood it in a way, since he had probably researched my background in as far as he was able and was very likely trying in his own way to work in the best interests of his clients. What he did not understand was that I was also doing my best to work in their best interest, as far as it was in my power to do.

"I did not realize that your signature was valid on this particular account." he said shortly.

"This and all the others." I replied, just as shortly. "Look. The check is legitimate, as all the others have been. Would you care to speak to Monsieur about it? He has specified that he would rather not be disturbed at this time, but if you really wish it…"

"No. No, that will not be necessary." he said hastily. "But be assured, Mr. Callahan, that should there be any question as to any of these proceedings, it will be on your head."

"It's all on my head." I said stiffly, "And no one is more aware of that than I am." I broke the connection and set the phone in the cradle.

Would anything be on my head? I wondered about it sometimes. I wondered if I would ever hear anything from either of them again.

I had not seen or heard from Louis since the night he came down from the attic and there had been no word from Lestat, assuming he was alive as Louis had said. I spent a good deal of my time obsessively going over work, checking any and all documents that the bank and the lawyers sent, as though by doing so I might somehow make things normal again. It didn't work. I tried to drown myself in drink and anonymous sex, neither of which alleviated the depression that hung about me like a dark cloud.

The worst thing was being left in the dark, and if it was like this for me, how was it for Louis? I obsessed over that, poring over each argument I'd heard, each altercation witnessed.

>   
>  _"You leave for weeks at a time and when you return I am to ask no questions, show no concern?" _
> 
> "I was not gone for weeks." Lestat snapped. "And I never said you could not ask questions."
> 
> "Ah, non. You just refuse to answer them. It has not changed at all, has it? You will always keep things to yourself, share only bits and pieces. You lavish me with things that I do not need and would never ask for, but the one thing I have ever wanted from you is the thing that you refuse me."
> 
> "I have no idea what you are talking about, Louis."
> 
> "And so it has always been. You hear what I say but you don't really listen. You grow restless, you seek out another and another until you find one that holds your attention for a night or a month or longer. If you don't wish to stay, I would never hold you back."

*****

>   
>  _"Why would you trust him? You have said yourself that you cannot tell what he is thinking. Why would you trust any of them? The Order has its own agenda and you know it is not always just watching."_
> 
> "I can't tell what you are thinking, Louis, and I trust you, yes?" Lestat's voice, sneering and angry.

Louis did not always engage, but there were times when Lestat drove him to a cold fury that would cause him to strike out and they would grapple and fight like angry cats, heedless of their surroundings and the damage caused.

"I don't think he is dead." Louis had said. I believed him then, but as the days passed and I heard nothing at all from either of them I began to wonder if Lestat had actually managed to immolate himself. Had Louis, unable to bear being left behind, followed?

I kept working with a sort of feverish doggedness, sick at heart and wondering just what I should do next. A missing persons report was beyond ridiculous and my own methodical searching had been fruitless. If Louis was still living in the sagging old house over on Annunciation, I could find no sign of it. Neither had he turned up at any of the other properties I went to, hoping to find him, or some trace of him. My one consolation, strange as it seems, was that if he did not wish to be found, I had very little chance of happening upon him. It was a faint hope, yeah, but it was all I had and I clung to it with all the tenacity of a drowning man clinging to a bit of wood in a dark, angry sea.

 

### 

Mid-July, 1992

 

Louis finally made an appearance in the small hours of an uncomfortably humid night. I was sitting on my porch staring morosely at the darkened townhouse across the courtyard and pouring myself shots of Black Bush at ever-shortening intervals. He stepped into the weak circle of light cast by the citronella candle flickering on the table beside me, and because I was pretty numb at that point, his appearance didn't startle me at all.

"I'd offer you a drink, but what's the point?" I said, gesturing to the wicker chair he was standing beside. He sat down. "You look like you could use one, though."

"Do I? Well, it would appear that you have had enough for two." he remarked mildly. "No criticism intended. I was well-acquainted with the bottle myself at one time."

I nodded and poured myself another glass. "I wondered if I was ever going to see you again."

"Why not say what you mean? You wonder if you will ever see Lestat again."

I shrugged. "That's a given. I went looking for you at that house you'd been holed up in."

"To see how I was? Very touching, I am sure. I have not been there for a while."

His sarcasm didn't bother me; I was just glad to see him again.

"Actually, no. A message for you, left on the answering machine, a very British Mr. Talbot calling to say that Lestat was staying with him in London, at least for the time being. That was three weeks ago, so I imagine you probably know already. The vampire underground or whatever it is."

Louis did not say anything; he did not even appear to have heard what I said. Had I so easily forgotten how he looked? How fine his features were and how dark the sweep of his black hair was against his white flesh? He blinked and shifted his unsettling green gaze my way. Bolstered with whatever courage good whiskey bestows, I did not lower my eyes, braving the burn.

"I know." he said at last. "I know about that and more. I have seen him, you see, but he is gone again. He left very angry and in his mind he thinks that I have betrayed him. Again."

"You? Why would he think that?"

He gave me the barest hint of a smile. "He does not like to be refused, as you well know. Even now his bull-headedness may get him out of what he views as the worst of situations, even though he has brought it all upon himself. I couldn't do what he asked of me and so he thinks I have betrayed him."

"What did he ask you to do?" I said, mystified.

"That is a very long story and I haven't much time left."

I dragged my gaze from his face then and looked about to see that the courtyard was no longer dark. There was a mist rising from the plants and the fountain splashing midway between the townhouse and my little house. Louis made no further attempt at elucidation.

"I shall stay in the house today." he said, rising. "Good night."

 

### 

Late July, 1992

I was considerably more startled when I finally saw Lestat again.

I was in the office when he came back. When I heard the door open, I thought it was Louis, back from wherever he'd been. He had been staying in the townhouse sporadically and our paths had been crossing on a more regular basis. The footsteps on the stairs were light, but somehow different and I turned in the chair when I felt his presence at the doorway.

"Oh, my God." I said, standing up. It was Lestat. Breathtaking as he always is, but so vastly changed from when I had last seen him that I didn't even know what to say.

"Well, it's nice to see you, too, Brian." he said expansively. He pulled me into an affectionate embrace and I responded by giving him a strong, relieved hug.

"You look so different." I managed, after he released me and stepped past me to take a desultory glance at the sprawl of papers on the desk.

"Yes. An improvement, I think."

His skin was tawny and he looked so much more human that I wondered how on earth anyone had ever thought he was before. His eyes were unchanged however, that same mesmerizing, oceanic shift of color. I opened my mouth and then closed it again, still at a loss for words. The relief I felt was huge, so much so that it was suddenly difficult to breathe. I sat down and he turned to look at me.

"I want to thank you for attending to things while I was -- gone. I am sure you have many questions, but I am in a hurry right now. I don't suppose you know where Louis might be?"

"No. He's been stopping in here more often lately, though."

"I think I know why that might be." he remarked with a bit of a hard-edged smile. "I'll come back if I don't find him." His smile softened and looked more genuine. "I meant it about you attending to things. I'm sure it got a bit difficult."

There were things I wanted to say to him, but I couldn't get past the joy of seeing him again, at least not right then. He nodded and I knew that he'd caught that last thought. "I'm glad you've come back." I murmured.

"So am I." he said.

 

### 

September, 1992

 

I don't pretend to I know a lot about these beings that I have bound myself to. My frame of reference is not theirs; they are mysterious and capricious and disturbing. They are, in other words, not human and so by this time you'd think I would understand that their actions can't usually be compared to human actions.

Except -- except that sometimes, they seem overly human. Human emotion, certainly, is evident; love and anger and jealousy and pain, these are all emotions that they share with humans, only they are often magnified to a volatile degree. There had been several changes since Lestat left a few months back. I can only guess at the sequence of events and how some of them came to pass; there has been little time for the asking of questions and in any case, I am not even sure what I would have said had there been the opportunity.

A big change was that Lestat had himself another fledgling. Another was that he, Louis and this David had, all three of them, gone off to South America. This was the David Talbot that I'd spoken to briefly sometime back and from what I had managed to piece together, he was human and an old guy at that time. And let's not forget that sometime between that conversation and now, Lestat had gotten himself into a mortal body and found out that being human was not the sunshine-y picnic he'd remembered it as being. He'd come back in that form to get Louis to turn him back into a vampire. Louis wouldn't, so he left and somehow, with this David's help, he had managed to get his own body back from the guy who had tricked him into the trade and now David wore that body, like it was a suit of clothes that Lestat had decided didn't fit.

Crazy, huh?

Like I said, I don't know all the details, but I was having a hell of a time trying to digest it all; there were a lot of things, beyond the whole body-switching thing that didn't connect properly. I'd only gotten a few glimpses of David; I heard more than I saw the times that I was in the house when they were all there. Maybe it was just the whole because-they-are-vampires-that's-why thing, but it was hard to miss the tension in the house with David there and Lestat's overboard all is well attitude. Louis was impassive and quiet, speaking in an overly polite tone whenever David addressed him. I was surprised at first that he'd agreed to go with them to Rio, but thinking it over after they had left, it occurred to me that if I thought the dots didn't quite connect then it was very likely that Louis knew it as well and had gone along to observe the situation further.

My own feelings were much less ambiguous; Lestat may well have thought that Louis betrayed him when he'd come looking for help in his fragile human shell, but if anyone should have felt betrayed it was Louis. First, there was the suicide attempt, or whatever the hell it was and then bringing this David character into a mix that was precarious at best. Lestat had not been here to see how Louis had been, how he had suffered, but I had and I found the new situation infuriating.

Not that anyone had asked my opinion.

In the meantime, I went about my daily business and I made an effort to distract myself with less destructive means than drinking myself into oblivion. In attending to the various repairs around the townhouse and my own place, I discovered I had a knack for woodworking. I learned about plastering and started reading books about local architecture. I got myself a small boat and I taught myself to fish. Oh, and I began flying lessons. I had more money now than I knew what to do with and it seemed like something that might be useful.

 

### 

October, 1992

Louis arrived back in New Orleans alone and took up residence in the house again. He was not immediately forthcoming about anything that had happened when he'd gone to Rio and I forbore asking him any questions, limiting myself to speaking only when necessary. He did not seem to be in any extreme distress, nor did he seem angry, but he was almost impossibly remote when he first got back. He would sit or stand unmoving in one place for hours at a time and then he would suddenly stir himself and leave the house for short periods. Sometimes it was evident that he'd gone to hunt, returning with his skin pinked and warm-looking but what he might have been doing the other times I had no way of knowing.

The month wore on and Louis thawed by degrees, going so far as to have several actual conversations with me that did not concern the running of the house or the finances. If it was anyone else I would have said he was lonely, but with Louis I figured it was more along the lines that I was, in my own small way, a connection of sorts to Lestat. I don't mean that I heard from Lestat; I hadn't, except for emails with instructions to dispose of certain stocks and the gradual buy out of some others. I didn't fool myself into thinking that Louis and I were the best of friends; far from it. When the mood struck him he was as cold as he'd ever been, though much less distrustful, but clearly something had changed.

There was the night he spoke to me at length about fishing in the bayou when he was a boy and how I should forgo the little powerboat I used and get myself a pirogue. "Do you think the fish like petrol flowing through their gills? That they will surface for your bait through an oil slick? All the noise? Of course not. Fishing is a quiet enterprise, Brian."

Another night he came to the back to see me, bearing a bottle of expensive, old wine. He uncorked it and set it down to breathe while I went in and got a wineglass. When he thought the time was right he poured a glass for me and went into a long and interesting soliloquy concerning wine and vineyards and how his father had grown up tending grapes in Marcenais on his grandfather's land.

"Why did he leave?" I asked him. I was on my third glass, feeling extraordinarily mellow.

"He was the third son and would not inherit, you see. He came here to make his way."

"I thought you were born in France."

"I was. My mother had her confinement in France and my father brought us to Louisiana when I was little more than an infant."

He spoke no more about his family and I was sensitive enough to his facial expressions to know that he would not welcome any more questions about them. I gathered myself and asked him one other question.

"Is Lestat going to come back?"

He looked at me curiously, perhaps wondering why I'd chosen that moment to ask him. "In time." he said.

"What about David?"

"What about him?" Again, the look of curiosity, as though he could not fathom why I would ask such a thing.

"Will he be coming here?"

"No. Do you think I would welcome such an arrangement?"

"I didn't know what to think after you left with them." I said truthfully.

"Ah. I believe I understand your confusion. You thought that my leaving with them suggested some sort of approval?"

I nodded and he smiled very slightly.

"Lestat does as he will. He does not seek my approval and neither do I seek to enforce it. Do you see?"

"I see that. I still don't know why you went."

"I went to watch him, this David Talbot." His eyes narrowed for a moment and I swore I felt a wave of heat pass over me, negating for an instant the coolness of the rainy night.

"What did you see?" I asked. My voice sounded small and far away in my ears.

"Subtlety."

"Subtlety? How so?" I asked, trying to follow his reasoning.

"Deceptive, Brian. Perhaps injuriously so. The word has more than one meaning. Think of it in conjunction with poison, for example."

He said this in tones of patient instruction and I appreciated the effort he was making not to sound condescending.

"How do you know?" The comparison to poison made me uneasy. Lestat may have been able to face the sun and come through with nothing more serious than bronzed skin, he may have had his body stolen from him and then been able to wrest it back but that did not mean he was safe from all harm, did it? After all the Eldest of all of them had been annihilated--destroyed by Lestat's own hand.

 

"I could not read him as I thought I might be able to." He said, picking up on my own thought. "But I caught an impression and I do not think he was aware of it. He is newly made and his focus was on his senses, the remarkable vision, the strength in his limbs."

"Subtlety?"

He nodded and poured the last of the wine into my glass. "Just so."

 

### 

Early December, 1992

Lestat returned on the first day of December. I was in the office watching as Louis dutifully signed a small stack of checks and assorted legal documents. He did so with startling rapidity, blurring through the paperwork in a manner that was very unlike him. He usually took his time, signing his name carefully with an old-fashioned fountain pen. He once told me that he liked the smell of the inks and the scratch of pen on paper.

When he finished, he pushed the stack back to me and rose to open the doors to the narrow balcony. Here was an air of coiled tension about him and instead of standing still with his hands clasped behind his back as I had so often seen him do, he stepped out to the rail balanced on the balls of his feet as though he might at any moment spring up into the air.

"Louis, is something the matter?"

He swung around to face me and I stepped back from the green blaze of his eyes, heart fluttering in my chest.

"Lestat is back." he said in a low voice.

 

### 

Mid –December, 1992

Lestat had come back, but I didn't see him for the first two weeks of the month. I rarely saw Louis during that time and more often than not when we crossed paths he barely seemed to notice me. I didn't take it personally; I hoped it was a sign that he and Lestat had been having some sort of dialog.

It was hard to tell anything by just looking at Louis. Any difference in him would be noticeable as a certain gauntness to his face and frame, occasionally turning to an emaciated appearance. His skin at those times appeared almost translucent, accentuating the tracery of blue veins beneath. This gauntness made his teeth much more prominent; he'd looked like that for a while after Lestat had done his disappearing act.He did not look like that now, however. In fact, he looked like he'd been feeding regularly and even though he hadn't spoken to me much, there was a certain aura of careful satisfaction about him.

I was walking along Decatur toward Virgin Records when I saw Lestat at last. He came up beside me just as I was about to cross the street.

"Hello, Brian. "

And just like that, all the anger I'd let build up again drained away and I wondered briefly if he was softening the edges of it.

"I was beginning to think Louis was imagining things. It's good to see you."

"You weren't thinking that a minute ago." he said, taking my elbow and hurrying me across the street.

"Nosy." I said. I couldn't take my eyes off his profile. "Where's your new buddy?" I guess some of that anger was still there after all.

"A parting of ways." he said a trifle brusquely. "Where are we going?"

"Virgin." I said. "Can I ask you something?"

"As long as it's not about David." he said. "I've talked about him until I'm blue in the face and I'm weary of it."

"I guess that answers my question, really." We went into the store, loud with reggae and overly warm for the mild night. "I was going to ask if you had been speaking to Louis."

"I have, _Maman Poulet_. Never fear, he is more than able to fend for himself." he said ruefully.

"Are you coming back to Royal Street?"

"In time." he said, echoing what Louis had said to me some time back. "It's not as though I am unaware of how much damage I've done, so you can stop looking at me as though I were an idiot child."

I had been doing no such thing, of course. I may have been angry and upset about what he'd done but I knew better than to overstep. Louis often called him mercurial; I thought of it more as volatile.

"I never thought that." I said quietly. "But I don't understand a lot of it."

"Neither do I." he said heavily.

NEXT: 1993


	4. Part Four - 1993

### 

Darkside  
Part Four

 

### 

Early February, 1993

"Why are you looking at me like that?" Lestat said.

"I just can't believe you did something so hare-brai--" I stopped myself. "Something like that."

"I'm trying to tell you; I wanted to know what it was to be mortal again." he said with some asperity.

"Okay, fine. I get that, I guess. But geez Lestat, a little kid could figure out that this James guy had no intention of keeping up his end of the bargain."

Lestat was home again and things were a little more normal, although sometimes there was a certain brittleness between him and Louis that I couldn't help but notice. When Lestat decided he was going to tell me about his latest escapade, I was a little apprehensive, thinking that it might upset Louis. I was wrong this time; Louis sat serenely in one of the wing chairs by the fireplace with Lestat on the floor before him, seated between his legs. Mojo, the newest member of the household, lay with his large head on Lestat's thigh. Lestat ruffled his fur absently.

"With that kind of money at stake? He was so greedy, I never thought he'd be able to pass it up."

"In your body with all your power?" I said incredulously. "He could have taken what he wanted. What made you think otherwise? He cleaned out a few of your stashes anyway." I said, remembering the horrified panic I'd felt when I'd seen the paperwork from Rothschilds. The money doesn't really mean much to them, but I was supposed to be looking after it and, having no idea what had been going on with Lestat at that point, I was understandably bewildered and upset as to how such a large amount could have been removed.

"Yes, he did, the beast." Lestat said testily. "Alright, yes. It was incredibly naïve of me to have trusted him and an infant would have known the difference. Believe me, I had plenty of time to obsess over my arrogance and stupidity when I was trapped in that clumsy mass of flesh."

"I think now that I should have sent you to Brian when you came and told me of your mad scheme. Perhaps the simplest argument would have worked." Louis said. There was no rancor in his tone, just a bemused resignation. He ran his hand through Lestat's hair and Lestat leaned back to his touch, eyes closed in pleasure.

"So, how was it after all this time? You know, aside from the fiasco with James?"

Lestat opened his eyes and shrugged minutely. "It wasn't what I imagined it would be like. I failed to take quite a few things into account, I'm afraid. Really, Brian, I have to tell you, my admiration for you has gone up immeasurably; I can't imagine how you manage to get anything done in such a frail body. I managed to injure myself and become deathly ill in short order."

"You got sick?"

"He had a cold." Louis murmured.

"It was more than a cold, you know." Lestat said, still slightly defensive. "Pneumonia at the very least. Horrible. If it wasn't for Mojo, I would very likely have died." At the sound of his name, Mojo thumped his tail twice.

"Well, it couldn't have been all bad." I said, sidestepping the thought that he had tried pretty hard to kill himself only a short time before he did this body-switch thing. "Did you eat anything?"

Lestat nodded. "Spaghetti. I have seen you eat that. How can you stand it? A sticky, congealed mess with no flavor at all. In fact, very little of the food I ate had much taste."

"Probably because you had a cold." I pointed out.

"I had chocolate." He said, ignoring my remark. "I liked that very much. Louis my love, had you ever tasted chocolate?" He leaned his head back to look up at Louis.

"I drank chocolate on occasion." Louis said, smiling at him. "I remember it tasting quite pleasant."

"I imagine that the hotel staff thought I was insane. There was chocolate in the mini-bar and after I tasted it, I ordered every chocolate dessert on the menu. Of course I was unable to eat all of it. I tried Scotch whiskey, too. Dreadful. I did manage to enjoy some wine once I had something with some bottom to it, unlike the _vin ordinare_ I had along with the spaghetti. I quite liked wine when I was mortal. But the best thing was walking in the sun, feeling the sun and my face. It was then that I was able to see a little more clearly with mortal eyes. Everything seemed so dim and muddy up until I went out into the sun."

Above and behind him, I caught an expression on Louis' face, visible for the barest moment; immeasurable sorrow. For what, I wondered? That he would have liked to see Lestat so? Or was he thinking of Lestat's other encounter with the sun? I couldn't tell because the expression vanished almost immediately and then Lestat was looking sharply at me as though he'd caught some of my thought.

"I've written most of it down." he said at length. "You can read it if you like. There were a few moments out of the whole debacle that were worth it, I suppose, but I'm afraid I didn't do very well as a mortal man. I found so much of it to be unbearably grotesque and foul. _Mon Dieu_, how can you even manage to keep clean?"

I blinked at his last statement and was about to make some answer when he gently moved Mojo's head from his leg and stood. In an instant he vanished from my sight and I saw him a moment later standing on the balcony, staring fixedly down the street.

I glanced at Louis; he leaned to give Mojo a reassuring pat. "What is it, Lestat?" He asked curiously. When Lestat made no answer, Louis rose to join him on the balcony. "What's got your attention, 'Stat?" he asked again.

"I heard something." Lestat said, as I stepped out behind them, also curious. I didn't say anything, assuming that whatever he was talking about was likely something I would not have noticed. "Someone." He amended. "You didn't hear, Louis?"

"No." Louis said. "Something out of the ordinary?"

"Yes. Like a whisper, really. My name."

"A vampire?" I queried. When I spoke he turned and the look of puzzled concentration fled.

"Maybe." he said, thoughtfully. "Though no one I am familiar with. Are you sure you didn't hear it, Louis?"

"I heard nothing out of the ordinary." Louis said patiently. "Perhaps one of the others is trying to gain your attention?"

"_Peut-être_." Lestat said, scanning the rainy street once again. Just as he was turning to go back inside, a gust of wind rattled the plants around us and he snapped around. "There. There! Who the hell is that?"

Then he was gone and Louis after him, both having leapt to the ground; at least that was what I assumed. I had seen nothing, of course; their movements had been too fast for me to track. They were nowhere in sight.

Leaning over the rail in the spot where Lestat had been standing only moments before, I peered in the direction I'd seen him look. I could see precious little outside the wet pools of light cast by street lamps and the glow from windows. Shadows and rain, and a couple coming round the corner at Ursulines, hidden beneath an umbrella. After a few minutes, I retreated indoors, closing out the wind and rain.

 

### 

Late February, 1993

 

Had the incident when Lestat had thought he heard someone – not mortal— calling him been an isolated one, I would have thought nothing more of it, but in the nights that followed he grew more and more convinced that someone was stalking him, a thing that both infuriated and intrigued him. Lestat left for several days, taking to the air and going back to Rio de Janeiro; he had become convinced that his stalker had picked up on his presence when he'd been there with Louis and David. When he returned, he was twitchy and restless and somehow more feral than I'd known him to be, at least toward me. He took me unawares several times and I have to say that when he'd come upon me like that it scared the holy old hell out of me, mostly because, although he laughed to see my sudden fright, the smile did not dissipate a certain flat chilliness in his eyes.

As a result, I'd taken to treading more carefully when I was near them. Louis had lapsed into cool watchfulness, understanding that something was indeed happening but unable to ascertain what it was. He paid very little attention to my comings and goings, speaking to me only occasionally.

In spite of a certain tentative discomfort on my part, which I know went largely unnoticed by either of them, I was unwilling to keep away from them altogether. I was under no illusion that I could be of much use to Lestat in dealing with whatever was going on, but the need to hover would not leave me and so I followed my instincts the way I had done since I'd first come into contact with them.

There was thick tension between them once again, but it was different this time, due more to Lestat's impatience with the circumstances and Louis' attempts to get to the root of the thing with penetrating questions to which Lestat had no answers. There were no arguments, not like there had been in earlier years, but things were definitely not harmonious. The Carnival season was building to the Mardi Gras crescendo when Lestat announced that they were leaving on Ash Wednesday for New York and would I please call and see to it that the Central Park South apartment was ready for their arrival.

"I'm staying here." Louis told him, even as I was speaking to Sal, the agent in New York who handled these things.

"Certainly not." Lestat said, briskly. "Why would you stay here? I want you to come with me."

"I think this is something you need to see to on your own." Louis said carefully. "You have stressed to me several times now that you were unsure of this—this creature yourself, that you cannot tell what it might be. If I thought it would do any good, I would ask you to drop it for good and all and stay here as well."

As I hung up from speaking to Sal, I could see that Lestat was making a concerted effort to keep his temper.

"Louis, you know I have to find out what it is."

"I know you feel you have to, yes." Louis replied. "I will be here when you return." He moved to enclose Lestat in an embrace and the stiffness in Lestat's shoulders eased considerably. They shared a deep kiss and when Louis released him it was clear that much of his annoyance had passed.

"You'll be here when I return?" Lestat said, brushing Louis' hair back from his face.

"Such a question. I said so, didn't I?" Louis chided. He caught Lestat's hand and pressed a kiss to the palm. "I will return shortly, _mon amour_."

When the door closed downstairs, Lestat turned to me.,

"He wants to come with me." he stated flatly.

"Of course he does."

"Yet he insists on staying here."

I looked at him for a moment, thinking.

"Come now, Brian, I know you have something to say."

"Could be he's worried about you."

"All the more reason he should come with me, then." Lestat said irritably.

"He never does anything without a reason." I pointed out. "Look--there's a difference in your strength and his, right? You said yourself you aren't really sure what is going on, if this stalker presence is another vampire. What if Louis feels you will be safer if you don't have to think about protecting him if things get ugly."

"That sounds like Louis, to be sure." Lestat said thoughtfully. "I wouldn't have to worry about such things if he would just share my blood." He looked pointedly at me as though I might have some answer to that remark.

"When has he ever done anything, or decided not to do something without a reason?"

"You think he does not trust me." Lestat stated heatedly. He had obviously caught my uppermost thought.

I shrugged. "Do you mean before or after you made David a vampire?" I muttered before I had a chance to think about what I was saying. I stepped back a pace from the flash of anger I saw in his eyes.

"You overstep." he said icily.

"Okay, yeah. None of my business, except you asked me what I thought. Do I know? I don't. I'm just guessing, but I think I might be right this time. Why are you pursuing this anyway? You went to Rio and learned nothing. Now New York? Why not just let it go?"

"You are a relatively sound human, all things considered, yes?"

I frowned, but I knew better than to question the sudden shift in topics. "I suppose."

"You don't hear voices in your head. If you did, you would see some sort of doctor, yes? Receive treatment? Medicines?"

"Yeah."

He nodded. "Yeah." he said, mimicking my voice with eerie accuracy. "But you know now that there are things outside the ken of most mortals. Creatures like Louis and myself. There are other things as well, and you would be much less surprised to see or hear any of them at this point than most of your fellow humans, yes?"

I nodded in the affirmative as I began to follow his line of reasoning.

"Well, then. Do you think I can just go on with my life with such an intrusion? I need to find out what it is. What it wants with me." he laughed suddenly. "I should not have to explain myself to you Brian, but there you have it."

 

### 

Mid March, 1993

 

Lestat went to New York and Louis stayed behind and for two weeks or so things had been pretty quiet. Mojo hung out with me most days, coming along whenever I went out and lying on the cool stone floor in my small front entryway when I was home. Louis came by to take him for walks in the early evenings and though he was polite, his mood was reserved and tense.

He had not been by for several nights but I hadn't thought much about it since it was not his habit to announce his plans as Lestat so often did. I had just stepped out of the shower when he phoned and in his usual manner he spoke as though I had been fully apprised about his whereabouts.

"I would appreciate it, Brian, if you would come and pick me up."

"Of course. Where are you?"

"I am in Florida." he said firmly.

"Florida." I repeated. "Where in Florida?"

"Destin. I am in an hotel on the beach."

"Okay. Which hotel?"

He made an impatient sound. "Comfort Inn Suites. Room 1012."

I already had the maps out and had located Destin, a tiny speck north of Panama City.

"I'll be there as soon as I can. It'll take a few hours, though. Do you need anything?"

"Nothing you can bring." he said distantly. The next thing I heard was the bland drone of the dial tone.

~~~~~

I found him sitting outside the door to his room, looking past the lights on the boardwalk to the dark sea. The long building had a wide sort of verandah that was several steps above the boardwalk. "There is another chair just inside the door." He said by way of greeting. I brought it outside and sat down beside him. The surf was up and the wind was laced with rain that had yet to reach the shore. Ragged white lines of sea foam were barely visible from where we sat and I smelled the ineffable scent of salty water. I wondered how it looked and smelled and sounded to Louis with his enhanced senses

"I brought the limo so if we leave right away, we'd be back in New Orleans before sun-up." I told him.

"I should have told you there was no rush." he said. "I would prefer to return tomorrow evening. You are tired from the drive?"

I caught myself in mid-yawn, frankly astonished by the remark. "Not too tired." I looked at him curiously and when he made no immediate answer I allowed myself a little time to take in his fine profile and the way the cool, fitful wind from the Gulf lifted his dark hair back from his face. Such scrutiny did not affect him in the slightest. After a while he spoke.

"You were worried when you arrived. Are you less so now?"

I smiled a little at the way he expressed it. "Yeah. I'm curious as to why you wanted me to come and get you, though."

"Seeing as I was able to make my way here on my own?" Though his face betrayed nothing, I could have sworn there was a teasing note in his voice.

"Well, yeah."

"Perhaps I wanted the chance to observe you away from the familiar. Where is Mojo?"

"Miss Claire has him. You know, from across the street."

Louis nodded absently and turned his head. That was when I felt the urge to look away, to lower my gaze from the brilliant green of his eyes. I didn't do it, though; I held his gaze.

"Before he left, I believe you offered Lestat an opinion as to why I did not wish to accompany him."

"He asked me what I thought." I said a little nervously.

"Is that what you honestly thought?"

I nodded. "It was only an opinion, of course."

"Of course. It was not too far off the mark however; you were correct in your assessment of my reason for staying behind. Rather astute of you, all things considered; I know I have not made it easy for you. You seem to have centered your life around the study of Lestat and myself."

I nodded again, acutely uncomfortable and utterly at a loss for words

"There is more to my reticence and the issue is not one of trust. At issue is Lestat himself, though I am quite sure he would disagree most vehemently. He is an impatient creature." he smiled fleetingly. "He thinks I refuse the offer of his blood, his power and strength because of our recent storms. He prefers to forget, especially in such times as these when his mind is bent toward some new pursuit, that _my_ thought is bent on knowing him in all ways."

A gust of wind swept the beach and far out over the dark water lightening flickered. "Why would he prefer to forget?" I asked, caught by his words.

"You would have to ask him that question." he said in his perplexing way. "Ask another."

"Why would taking his blood interfere with knowing him? I mean just the fact that he wants to share himself with you, you know--"

"Because this is the only time I have where our strength is not matched, when I am not more like he is now. I want to know him as he is now, so powerful and so strong. I did not know him when he was a mortal man and though he was much more powerful than I when he made me, there were other matters between us."

"Like there are now?"

"I suspect that Lestat will always have it in him to wander now and again. I am reconciled with it; I have no wish to change his nature for that is but a part of him that I cherish. His impulsiveness has a dark side—he acts precipitously and there have been times, some long past, and others, known to you, that have caused any amount of pain or grief to me, but also to himself." Louis said, gazing steadily at me.

I could barely keep still, held in his stare; he'd rarely spoken so much to me at one time, much less shared thoughts of this personal nature.

"Lestat claims any given moment, grasping it whole and beating and making it a part of him. That time is laid out for him like a banquet in which he oftentimes takes great delight is no surprise to me. It is perhaps why his own Maker chose him for he is suited for such a challenge." He bit at his lip thoughtfully. "Although--even Lestat has shown himself prone to despair from time to time."

From the far end of the long building, a couple turned the corner and walked along the wide verandah, presumably searching for their room. Their approach was obnoxiously loud and it set my teeth on edge. For his part, Louis seemed not to notice until they were passing in front of us and the man stopped and looked directly at him.

"_This_ is the guy?" he said in sneering tones to the woman he was with. He looks like one-a them fairies," he said belligerently. He swept us both with a contemptuous glance.

"Does your wife know you are with this deluded woman?" Louis asked as he gave the woman a sympathetic glance. "Whatever he has told you, he lies." He turned to face the man again and whatever the brute had been about to say died on his lips when he caught Louis' gaze. The woman looked from Louis to her companion with wary suspicion, but when he grabbed her hand, she followed him willingly enough.

When their door slammed shut, I turned to Louis.

"You saw her earlier?

"On the beach. Just after sunset." He replied. "We passed some words. Where was I?"

"You said that Lestat has shown himself to feel despair from time to time."

"You have read his books."

I nodded.

"You know then, that such despair possessed him even when he was mortal. He becomes overwhelmed, so much so that he is nearly incapacitated. As much as it hurt me to think he would try to take his life and leave me behind, I knew this about him; I have always known it."

"So, what about now?" I asked, giddy with the freedom of asking questions that I had held inside for such a long time. "What about David?"

"David?" He asked, his face animated with honest puzzlement.

"Doesn't it bother you that Lestat made him a vampire? And don't just say that Lestat always does whatever he wants. That's not what I'm asking you. How does David fit in?"

"He doesn't, as far as I am concerned." Louis said. "Of course I will say that Lestat does what he will. Why else David? Certainly it was not my idea."

I abandoned that line of questioning. He would not or did not want to speak of it, that was clear.

"Okay, so what about New York? What's going on?"

"I can't tell you that, either, since whatever or whoever is communicating with Lestat is in no way making itself known to me. I would have preferred that Lestat let it go, but I do understand his curiosity."

"Are you worried?"

"Worried?"

"Something bothers you about the whole thing." I ventured.

He gazed levelly at me for a long moment. "Yes. Something does."

"What is it?" He didn't answer immediately. The storm was moving in, with lightening flickering at more frequent intervals and the thunderclaps becoming louder and more frequent. He picked up his narrative presently.

"When I was a mortal man, I traveled once through this very body of water, around the Straits of Florida and up along the Atlantic seaboard to Savannah and Charleston. It was the farthest I'd ever gone from my home. There was such a storm in the Gulf, coming upon us suddenly when we'd gotten underway. The glass fell sharply and the storm was wild, the wind a harridan, shrieking through the masts and tearing at the sails, even though they were tightly furled. Through it all, I was singularly unafraid, though seamen who had spent their lives on the water muttered prayers and made the Sign of the Cross. To this day I love a storm, but I learned that you cannot be complacent about such things. There is something about Lestat's experience that plucks at my senses, warning me in the same way a gathering storm will cause most living creatures to seek shelter. If I had told him, he would have laughed me off and as you guessed, I felt that my presence might be distracting when he might well need to call upon all his senses."

The rain came in all at once, a sweeping sheet that ran up the beach like a living thing. The balcony above us provided little cover and Louis allowed that we should perhaps go inside and I followed him in, carrying my chair. He placed his chair before the window and opened the drapes, making no move to turn the lights on, so I put my chair on the other side of the cheap laminate table and sat down again. The rain painted shadows on Louis' pale face; they looked like dark tears.

 

### 

Early May, 1993

I won't say I don't know why I went there in the first place; I do know, but I might have tried it during the day if I'd thought it through a little better, because, fascination with Lestat and Louis aside, I was damned lucky I wasn't someone's pre-show snack that night. I think it was Marius that saved my hide because even as I walked up Napoleon Street, he was suddenly just there beside me, his pale hand gripping my biceps firmly.

"This visit is ill-advised." he informed me as we passed through the iron gate. There was a trio of people standing at the bottom of the steps—no, not people, I realized as Marius pulled me along. Vampires. One of them hissed at me as we passed, curling her tongue over her fangs. They all laughed.

"What do you think you're playing at?" Marius asked.

"I came to see him." I said. "I didn't think there would be—"

"You didn't think there would be others here? Come now. Do you expect me to believe that?"

We passed through a foyer and into a long room. A chapel, I realized. There were statues in niches and flickering candles. I saw him, then, sprawled on the floor, eyes sightless and staring, one arm stretched out before him as though he were reaching for something. Louis was beside him, cross-legged. I fell back a step, appalled. I hadn't known what to expect, gleaning from Louis only that Lestat had come back to New Orleans, but that something was wrong, something had happened. It had taken me weeks to even find out where Lestat was.

Louis turned and caught me in his gaze. After a moment, he gestured for me to approach and I moved toward him on rubbery legs.

"Why have you come here?" he muttered. I made no answer, but dropped to one knee, fighting back an emotion that I could not name. I heard murmuring when I reached to touch Lestat's wrist, but no one stopped me.

"What's wrong with him? What happened?" My voice was a dusty croak, forced out through my dry, closed throat. My eyes burned.

"You will stay here until dawn and then go home. Do not return to this place; there are those here who would kill you. Do you understand? Brian?" I nodded and Louis placed his hand over mine, removing it from Lestat's wrist with a gentleness that surprised me. I retired to one side where I could see them both and sat with my back against the wall. What had happened? Apparently no one was going to tell me and it occurred to me that perhaps none of them actually knew. I was the object of some curiosity, I found, once I'd gathered some of my wits about me again and began to look about and try to notice what was going on around me.

Except for me, everyone that was in my sight was a vampire. Ill-advised, Marius had said. Yeah. At any other time, I would probably have been much more curious, and probably more frightened, but under the circumstances I found myself watching them with a sort of detached interest. I remained unmolested, though I was aware that I was an object of some attention.

It was easy enough to tell who was who with some of them. David I'd seen before and Marius on an occasion when he'd come to speak with Lestat one evening. I knew Armand from the descriptions I'd read and I surmised the pale haired vampire that stood near him was probably Daniel, the same Daniel who, when he was mortal, had spoken with Louis years ago. Gabrielle had passed on her specific, almost alarming beauty to her son, but he had not inherited her innate coldness. She stood alone, her eyes nearly as expressionless as her prone sons'. When her gaze found me, I wished myself to be small and unnoticeable, for she stared at me in a penetrating manner.

The hours passed and whatever fear I felt seeped away, replaced with the pervasive anxiety I'd felt since Louis had informed me that Lestat was not himself. Seeing what he meant only increased the feeling, overlaid with a sort of helpless pain at seeing him so still and unresponsive—so unlike the Lestat I had come to know.

David approached them, laying a hand on Louis' shoulder. Louis stiffened and David removed his hand, leaning to say something to him. Louis kept his eyes on Lestat, but he appeared to be listening to whatever David had to say, nodding imperceptibly after a moment. David left him alone and he stayed where he was for a while longer, leaning to speak into Lestat's ear, his hand smoothing Lestat's pale hair as he did so.

When he was finished, he walked past me, gesturing for me to follow him. Louis matched his pace to mine and we went up the street toward Prytania. The air was sodden, a heavy mist curling around our legs. Foliage dripped with moisture and the scrolled iron fences gleamed beneath the haloed streetlamps; it seemed very quiet, very still. After a while, Louis spoke.

"You asked me what happened to him. I have no answer for you and neither do any of the others. I know you came here out of concern but you cannot help him and there is a better than average chance now that one of these others will come looking for you. Lestat cannot help you and the old ones may have some influence over these younger ones, but their minds are not focused solely upon you. You were fortunate that Marius realized you were outside. For Lestat's sake I would not see you hurt or killed. He has a fondness for you."

I hardly knew what to say. His voice was not cold but neither was it warm; he was simply telling me the truth of things as they stood.

"How did you get here?" He asked me suddenly.

"I drove. The car is parked on Prytania."

He nodded. "I will drive back with you."

"I could have waited until sunrise. If you wanted to stay, I mean." I said, arming the sweat from my forehead. It was breathlessly hot.

"Of course." he said distantly. We turned the corner onto Prytania. When we reached the car he waited behind me while I unlocked the passenger's side. As I straightened up he leaned in and spoke into my ear, his hands clutching my shoulders with bruising force. "This much I know. He is lost, looking for the way back and I do not know how to help him." He rested his forehead against the back of my neck for a moment before letting go and slipping into the passenger seat.

 

### 

August, 1993

The summer passed, a progression of savagely hot days that sapped whatever store of energy I had the minute I stepped out the door. Not that I had much in the way of energy, really. The days blurred into one another and though I tried to use my time constructively, I'd fallen into a bleak despondency.

I had done as Louis asked and stayed away from St. Elizabeth's at night. I was left unmolested by any of the other vampires, known or unknown. The days felt safe enough to me and I got into the habit of taking the streetcar out to Napoleon Avenue every so often to look in on Lestat. I'd found a way to get in through a door around the back of the long brick building. No one ever questioned me or even appeared to notice. I never went anywhere else in that building except to the chapel where he lay—if the others were sleeping there, I had no wish to come upon them.

I didn't like going there; seeing him so still, lying on the floor of that dim place with only flickering candles for light put me in mind of a wake. I went anyway, driven to it by a tenebrous whisper that speculated upon--what? Intruders? Laughable. Louis had told me that there had been a general surprise among the others that Lestat had not flung me back when I'd touched him. That self-preservation instinct was still intact and had been the only movement that he had made since he'd fallen into the state. Others had approached and been rebuffed, flung to the wall with immense force, Louis said. All except for himself and, when it came down to it, me.

I'd sit on the floor near his sprawled unmoving body. Once my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I would gaze at him, willing him to move a muscle, make a sound or just blink. Anything at all to end the unnerving stillness, so alien to the way I had known him to be. The stained glass windows were shrouded to keep out the sun and I found myself wondering about that; Lestat had survived the sun with little else than tawny skin to show for it. But stare as I might, hoping to see some sign of life, will it as I would, he never moved, not even when I reached and brush the knuckles of his hand.

Unlike Louis. Louis struggled daily against the deathsleep, much as he had when Lestat had gone away from him before. His eyes would snap open and he would move with sluggish, bleary awareness, muttering in French. These episodes never lasted long, but they took their toll on him, especially since I was reasonably certain he was not feeding much. He was gaunt and his skin seemed almost translucent.

Going to St. E's had become my religion. It was like visiting a saint's reliquary and just thinking that made me feel slightly sick, because it meant that I didn't believe Lestat would come out of the state he was in. These thoughts chased themselves around and around in my head, circular and maddening, making me feel disloyal and traitorous.

I spoke to him when I was there, keeping my voice low and quiet. I told him about Mojo and our walks and about the progress being made at one of the old houses he had wanted restored several blocks from where we were. Sometimes I confessed my fear that he would not come around while I was still alive to see it. I begged him to move, just a little; I told him he had to do it because Louis was waiting for him and to see Louis so splintered was almost as bad as seeing Lestat insensible and unaware. Nothing ever happened but I went back once a week or so anyway, to say my prayers into his unhearing ear.

I was always very careful to leave well before dusk, in line with Louis' warning. One of those times I'd ridden the streetcar back to Canal St., stopping on my walk home for an oyster po'boy. I staked a place out on a bench on St. Peter's facing the Pontalba Apartments and I watched the shadows pool beneath the long colonnade as I ate.

A stiff breeze rattled the ragged leaves of the banana trees and the way it dried the sweat from my face was a welcome thing even though I knew it heralded rain. I remember thinking that I was hungrier than I thought; I'd been counting back to see just how many meals I'd skipped, wadding the deli paper and stuffing it back into the greasy brown bag. When I reached for my drink, I felt the hairs on my neck rise. I looked around and after a moment I focused on a figure standing in front of one of the store fronts. It was David.

He walked toward me and I stood up. "Hello, Brian." He said, seating himself on my vacated bench. "I thought that was you coming out of the restaurant. Do you have a moment?" My heart skipped a beat.

"Did something happen with Lestat?" I asked.

"No, I'm afraid not. Everything is the same." he said in tones of sincerest apology. "I wondered how Louis is faring."

I sat down, somewhat baffled by the question.

"Louis? What do you mean? He is there with Lestat every night, isn't he?"

"Yes, he is. I was referring to his sleep pattern." He said delicately. "Has he been awakening?"

It startled me a little. It had not occurred to me that perhaps such a thing had happened to others. I felt reticent about answering, however. It had become habit to keep things to myself and I didn't think Louis would care to be the subject of a discussion between David and myself.

"I wouldn't know." I told him, watching him warily.

He smiled benevolently. "It was only a question. I recall that you spent time in the main house in order to keep the books and such things. Perhaps you have heard something?"

"Only the clocks." I told him, wearing a large, false smile. Lightening flickered above us followed by a long rumble of thunder. "I should go. I need to let Mojo out."

"Of course." he said, standing even as I did. "He has been inside all day, hasn't he?"

"Most of the afternoon." I said carefully.

"Ah. Well, best get on, then. It was good to see you, Brian. Please keep yourself safe. Good night."

 

### 

Late October, 1993

 

I was in the kitchen, working on plastering the ceiling. This was one project in a stream of many that I had been working on rather feverishly in order to keep myself from thinking too much. I was surprised when I heard the front door open because Louis had not been to the townhouse in quite a while which meant nothing much had changed. I got down from the step ladder and went out to the foyer, rubbing my plaster-whitened hands on my jeans.

"Louis?" I came out from around the stairs and stopped, certain for a moment that I was hallucinating. I was not.

"Oh, my God. Lestat. Oh…"

It was Lestat, looking as though nothing had happened, looking as he had the last time I'd seen him awake and aware.

"Brian." He acknowledged. That was when I could see that he really didn't look the same, not when I saw his eyes, troubled and wary and disconcertingly vague. Louis had a protective arm about Lestat's shoulders.

"I'm so glad to see you." I said simply. I held a hand out and he took it briefly.

"Thank you." he said with a wan smile.

"Brian, I know you have been most anxious and I have no wish to appear rude, but you will understand if you do not hear anything from us for a while, yes?" Louis said briskly.

I nodded. "Of course."

"There will no doubt be calls and perhaps visitors. I want it made clear that Lestat will not be disturbed. You will call upon me only if conditions become unmanageable. Do you understand?"

"Yes, I understand."

"Good." And with that, I was dismissed from his mind as he looked to Lestat. "Come, Lestat. We'll go to our bed now, my love." he said softly.

Lestat had been quiet throughout this exchange, head slightly cocked as though listening, eyes still far away, but when Louis said his name he turned his head and the vagueness left his expression. I was enormously relieved to see it because Lestat vague? Lestat tentative? It had been distressing to see him in his coma-like state; seeing what looked like lingering after-effects brought with it another layer of worry over what had been an untenable situation.

They went upstairs and I heard nothing more for several nights. Nothing from them, at least. The phone rang frequently and I answered the questions put to me politely but with little substance—I told those interested parties that as far as I knew, Lestat was fine and so was Louis and no, nothing untoward had happened. Yes they were still here, yes I was sure. No, Lestat did not want to speak to anyone. No, visitors were not a good idea. No, I could not ask, pressure or demand that Louis to bring Lestat back to St. E's. That last one struck me funny and I laughed after I hung up, picturing myself demanding that Louis deliver Lestat back to that place.

Pressure Louis. Demand! Yeah, right.

The calls tapered off, I suppose because I had nothing different to say to any of them. During the day I looked in on them, vague shapes under the blankets, only the tops of their heads visible, dark and light. The room was intact and so was the bed; I did not dare to approach too closely, did not think to remove the protective cocoon. Something in me warned me to keep my distance.

The doorbell summoned me the sixth night after Lestat's return. It was David, insisting that I let him in, demanding that I answer some questions and that he would no longer put up with any vagaries. I let him in, of course- for what else could I do? He followed me into the small sitting room off the foyer and by the time he sat down, he'd regained his courteous demeanor, going so far as to apologize for his sharpness.

"I have been worried, you see. None of us has heard anything from either of them and considering the fact that no one is really sure what happened to Lestat, there is some concern that he might harm Louis."

I bit back an impatient answer. "Louis was the only one that could get near him when he was in that state." I pointed out. "When they came home, he didn't seem inclined to any violence toward Louis—quite the opposite, in fact."

He digested that for a moment and then looked earnestly at me. "Perhaps you would be so kind as to go and ask Lestat to come downstairs for a moment? I should like to speak with him."

"I'm sorry, but that's not possible." I said in as polite a voice as I could muster. "Louis expressed to me in no uncertain terms that Lestat was not to be disturbed."

"I'm hardly here to disturb him, Brian. I would just like to speak to him for a few minutes."

"I understand your concern, but surely you can see what a position I am in. If you will remain insistent, I can ask Louis to come and give you the reassurances that you are looking for."

His dark eyes narrowed slightly and it was clear to me that he was angrier than he looked. "You know he's all right." I said quietly. "He's getting what he needs right now. When he's ready to see you or any of the others, I'm sure you will know about it. It can't be so hard to understand that he might want to be left alone here in his home with Louis, can it?"

His stare was intimidating but not frightening. "I suppose you are correct." He said at length. "Please tell Lestat I was here, would you?"

"Of course."

 

### 

*****

 

Louis emerged from the bedroom not long after David had gone away, looking as though he'd dressed hurriedly.

"I will be out for a time. Whatever you are doing to keep things under control, please continue. If Lestat calls you, you will of course go to him, but otherwise leave him undisturbed. I will be back soon."

He left without saying anything further. Almost immediately the phone rang again and this time it was Marius checking in. In the midst of one of the variations on the same speech I had been reciting for days I heard snarling followed by a crash from the bedroom. I made a hasty excuse and hung up the phone, hurrying down the hall.

After a moment of listening at the door, I opened it and put my head in. "Are you all right?" I asked, flicking the lights on. A quick scan of the room revealed an overturned vase of flowers and the small table it had been on. The carpet was soaked and the scent of lilies was intense. Lestat stood to one side.

"A little clumsy, I'm afraid." he said apologetically.

"I'll take care of it." I assured him. I went into their bathroom and got a towel and a plastic bag from the closet. He stood in the same place, fists clenched and shoulders tense..

"Who was on the phone?" he asked as I laid the towel over the wet carpet. I put the broken flowers into the bag and picked up the shards of the heavy vase.

"Marius." I said, finally looking into his eyes as I stood up. "Just calling to see how you were. Are you sure you're okay?"

He shrugged. "Yes."

I wanted to ask him so many things, but it was not the right time; it might never be the right time. I heard the front door opening. "Louis is back." I told him, as though he didn't know it for himself. He nodded and his shoulders sagged a little with relief.

I nearly ran into Louis when I left the room. He eyed the remains of the vase. "Just a little accident." I told him. He said nothing but hastened into the room.

"Lestat, what has happened?"

"Someone trying to get in. In my head." he mumbled, leaning against Louis. "I knocked the flowers over, that's all."

"Who tried to get in?"

"I don't know." Lestat said, frustration evident in his tone. "I couldn't tell, and it was difficult to keep resisting."

"Never mind, angel." Louis said. He caressed Lestat's shoulder blades and Lestat laid his head on Louis' shoulder. I closed the door, then, giving them their privacy, and went downstairs to dispose of the small wreckage, mulling over what Lestat had said.

 

### 

All Saints Day, 1993

The next time I saw them, I knew that any such notions that any of the other vampires might harbor regarding Louis being the weakest of their race would be blown completely out of the water. It was evident that he'd shared Lestat's immensely powerful blood at last and the effects were clear, even to my eyes. Louis was whiter than he'd been before and his skin had attained a porcelain smoothness that defies any adjective I know of, but that was the least of the changes. He crackled with a feverish energy. His movements were bizarre; so hectic and so fast that it was like watching someone moving before a strobe light.

Lestat, in great contrast, seemed almost drowsy, having seated himself in one of the wing chairs by the hearth. He watched Louis delightedly, eyes dancing as Louis moved about the room. I stayed out of the way by the open French doors. Louis' movements were disconcerting to say the least, but it wasn't as though he'd never made me feel like that before. Lestat looked at me for a penetrating moment and spoke as he flicked his gaze back to Louis.

"It might take a little while for him to get used to the feeling; I remember being quite beside myself at first." he said.

"Let's go, 'Stat." Louis said. He blurred past me and leapt lightly from the iron railing.

Lestat rose, smiling. "If anyone calls, Brian, tell them that everything is under control." He stepped past me and jumped onto the narrow iron rail, balancing as easily as a bird on a wire. He winked and then he too, was gone.

NEXT: 1994


	5. Part Five - 1994 (One of two parts)

### 

Darkside  
Part Five - 1994  
(One of two parts)

 

### 

Winter, 1994

Lestat has a decided flair for grand gestures. The case in point was the occasion of my receiving my pilot's license; Lestat's response to the achievement was to go out and buy a Lear jet and present me with the 'keys', so to speak, along with the suggestion that we all fly down for a holiday in the Caribbean 'to get away from all this tiresome nonsense'.

New jet and time in the Caribbean with them? Sounded pretty good to me, so I set about arranging to have one of the accountants take care of the bills while we were gone, filing a flight plan and arranging for a place to stay.

I showed Lestat the villa I'd settled on and he approved the choice with an absent air. "We'll look around for a place to purchase when we get there. After all it would be rude to inadvertently demolish someone else's property, yes?" His laughter trailed him down the stairs.

 

~~~~~

The villa was even nicer than it had looked on the website. It was a beautiful Caribbean gingerbread on the beach at Plantain Bay, complete with terrific views, gardens, a pool and several small guest cottages, one of which I took as my residence.

It didn't take me too long to figure out that Lestat's reasons for leaving New Orleans had much less to do with his being fed up with his fellow immortals clamoring for news of him than it did with wanting to take Louis away from prying eyes and overweening curiosity. The private nature of this particular island made it a good destination.

Lestat's own account of how he felt after he'd taken the blood of the eldest of all of them gives some indication of how such a sudden intake of power and strength, given all at once, was an overwhelming experience to say the least. When Louis drank at last from Lestat he did so in anticipation of sharing still another facet of his Beloved, but I would venture to say he wasn't quite prepared for the wallop that had very evidently taken place.

First there was the physical change; if he looked so startling to me, now very used to his appearance and some of the unsettling mannerisms he would unthinkingly display, then it was reasonable to assume that it might excite comment elsewhere. This is not to say that Louis cared a fig about what was said or thought about him. In fact, he did not appear to consider such things at all except in relation to how it might affect their night-to-night life in their chosen home. Lestat, however, was wholly aware that it would be a good idea to go to some private place and let Louis get a grip, so to speak.

How did I know? Because Lestat told me as much and also because I had eyes in my head. Louis' behavior had passed from unsettling into the outer reaches of bizarre on occasion. Bizarre to mortals, of course. I know that Lestat did not find Louis' appearance to be any more startling now than he did the first time he ever saw him, nor did he think Louis' exaggerated movements or his rapid subject changes in conversation were odd, in fact, he seemed almost unaware of anything out of the ordinary most of the time.

In this place, they could relax and not think at all about perception because there was no one nearby to see except for me. They would rise minutes after sunset with the clouds still streaked with red and gold and walk together in sand that still held the sun's heat. The illusion of human-ness fled quickly as the light did most nights when Louis would lower Lestat to the sand and suckle voraciously from him, his fangs embedded in Lestat's neck or shoulder or wrist and I would watch, straining to see as the tropical darkness fell with characteristic suddenness.

I'd caught glimpses of them in various activities since I first came to live behind the townhouse, but that was what they were most of the time; glimpses. With some idea that I was invading their privacy, I would tear myself away, retreating to my little house or going out for a drink someplace. If I was unable or unwilling to move, I suppose that they have forgiven it since I am still alive. Here in this place, though, they seemed to be inviting my voyeurism to the point of looking about to see if I was anywhere nearby, though I was always soon forgotten. Louis' voracious appetite for Lestat did not stop at taking his blood and they made love in their beautifully savage manner on the beach, in the garden, by the pool and, of course, in their bed.

Sometimes they swam in the dark sea, their bodies limned with glowing green light, eerie phosphorescence from plankton agitated by their passage. They would emerge with water streaming down the hard planes of their smooth bodies only to fall together once again while I watched, filled with lust and some unnamed longing.

I didn't spend all my time watching them because that way lies some sort of madness. To distance myself somewhat from my strange existence I took myself to Basil's, considered by the glitterati to be one of the best bars in the world. I personally didn't think so, but it was a good enough place to pass some time. I felt like a fraud among these people, so wealthy that they had no notion of what it might be like to live any other way. It might be argued that I had plenty of money of my own, but that didn't mean I would ever fit in with the sort of people I met on Mustique and it had nothing at all to do with the fact I was the personal assistant to a vampire and everything to do with the fact that I grew up in the Boston projects.

During the blue-gold days I learned to do things. I learned to scuba dive and I learned to sail, both things taught to me by a weathered whip cord of a man of indeterminate age named Mac. Mac was the only person I'd met on the island that seemed like a real person. He lived off the money he made teaching the monied people who visited the island how to do the things he was teaching me to do, but I never noticed any of them passing more than a few words with him in any other capacity. We took a liking to one another and after a while I stopped going to Basil's and took to visiting him at his place on the other side of the small island, drinking beer and listening to his tales of the people he'd met living on the island. He spoke with a Scots burr that he'd learned to make comprehensible to his clients, but as the evenings drew on and he got his load on it came back, thick as honey and musical in a comforting sort of way. Sometimes we fucked and when we did it was good, strong and satisfying in a way I'd not allowed myself to feel before, but most of the time we talked. When he had days to himself we took his boat out and fished or swam in the clear warm water, and he showed me places to dive that none of the rich and famous knew about. Best of all, Mac showed no interest in what I was doing there and who I was with. He was pleased to see me when I showed up, but never asked where I'd been or what I did when I wasn't around.

I did little else when we were there, Lestat and Louis being preoccupied with one another for the most part and business affairs being handled by Lestat's New Orleans accountant or the law firm. I wondered sometimes what my role was and if I ever brought it up to Lestat, he would smile indulgently and say it was whatever he needed me to be.

What Lestat wanted me to be for the most part was the person that make things run smoothly and to handle interactions that he did not choose to handle. A large part of what I did was to anticipate what might be needed or who needed to be handled in whatever manner; bankers, lawyers, brokers, some of whom knew about them and some who didn't.

One evening they came to the door of my cottage, curious as to where I was staying even though we'd been there for nearly a month. Lestat looked around the cottage and pronounced it comfortable and Louis just prowled around restlessly, clearly uninterested. I took a little time to observe him, noting with fascination the smooth, shining whiteness of his skin and the luster of his hair. Lestat has just such qualities, but as a result of his exposure to the sun, his skin looked as though he had acquired a perfect, golden tan and so he looked eminently more 'normal' to mortal eyes.

After a while, Louis wandered out to where Lestat and I stood among the perfectly placed potted plants on the balcony overlooking the beach. He sat down in one of the wicker chairs and regarded me.

"You are enjoying your stay?" he asked.

It would seem to be a normal thing to say, but Louis had not addressed me at all since our arrival on the island.

"Yes." I told him. "It's a beautiful place."

"You have made a conquest? I smell someone on your clothes. Who is it?"

Lestat, moving behind Louis' chair, grinned at me.

"Guy named Mac." I said. "He lives on the other side of the island. He's teaching me to sail. He's not a conquest, really." I shrugged.

"You like him, though." Lestat pointed out.

"Sure." I wanted to elaborate, to say that as beautiful as the surroundings were, I would much prefer to be back in New Orleans where there were all sorts of people. The environs of the uber-rich made me anxious in a way that I could not explain. Lestat and Louis are wealthy beyond imagining but it's different because money is most certainly not what motivates them. I didn't have to say it, as it turns out, because he was able to pick it out clearly from my thoughts.

"One would hardly think that staying here was such a burden." he said lightly.

"It's not." I said. "It's just different, that's all. At least I get Mac."

"Get?" Louis asked.

"Understand." I clarified. "He is what he is and there's no ulterior motivation going on when you're talking to him, no sizing up."

"Why would that bother you? Do you feel inadequate?"

"I just feel weird. It's tiring, the way that some of the people here scrutinize whatever you say or do. The way you look."

Louis nodded. "Social position and money can be tiresome as I recall." he agreed, after which he lapsed into silence as he reached up and back to catch Lestat's hand.

"I wondered where you'd gone off to." Lestat said teasingly. "We missed our audience, did we not Louis?"

Louis smiled, head tilted back to look up at Lestat.

"It was either that or explode, I guess." I mumbled. Lestat chuckled and moved to pull a chair beside Louis' "Can I ask you something? It's sort of changing the subject."

"Why not?"Lestat said expansively.

"Since we got here, has anyone else, you know, bothered you?"

"Bothered?" he asked, puzzled for a moment. "Ah. You mean sneaking in past my mental shields? No. Or if anyone has tried I haven't noticed. Everything is in place. No one will get by if I don't want them to." He said and there was a steely glint in his eyes. I glanced at Louis and was truly surprised to see his features drawn briefly in sorrow, composed immediately to a careful blankness when he saw me looking at him.

"I just wondered, you know, even though you seem like your old self."

"Whoever that is." he rejoined. "Not to worry, _cher_, no one will get in if I don't want them to. And now, if that's all I believe I must attend to Louis now." He turned to Louis. "Come, my restless love and we'll walk by the water, yes? The moon will be up soon."

 

~~~~~

 

Whatever I'd seen in Louis' expression that night, I saw no sign of it afterward. The time on the island was an idyllic time for them, or it seemed so to me at least. For me, it was yet another exercise in balancing the facets of my life.

It was a lot less complicated than it was at home because I didn't really know anyone on the island except for Mac and the passing acquaintance I had with Martha and Angie, the two ladies who came weekly to clean. I kept them well away from the bedroom and sometimes turned them away altogether, paying them extra for their wasted time. They began bringing me food they prepared, island dishes for me to try and sweets that they baked to show their appreciation.

When I spent time with Mac, it was easy enough to push the night visions to the back of my mind, but he noticed my preoccupation sometimes as the weeks wore on and we got to know each other a little better, commenting more than once that he wondered where I was sometimes. Of course, he couldn't know what it was like.

I came back to the villa late one evening, intending to take a swim in the pool before I went to bed. When I rounded the building and started down the steps that led to the pool area I saw that they'd lighted the torches that were placed around the pool and I hesitated on the narrow stairs. I didn't hear anything and there was the possibility that they had been there and then gone back inside or off to wander the island in the dark, leaving the torches lit.

Yeah. Right. It was a good excuse to go down and take a look, though.

At the far end of the pool from the stairs there was a seating area beneath a canvas awning, projecting from the steep side of the rocky hill. There were wide, padded banquettes beneath, covered with cool cotton in shades of deep blue and purple, mounded with pillows and surrounded by mosquito netting. I'd fallen asleep there several times during the long days.

"Brian. Home again at last, I see." Lestat said, finishing with a throaty chuckle that resonated in my lower belly. He was lying back against the heaped pillows, wearing a pair of loose-fitting deep red pants and a sash of pearly-grey wrapped enticingly around his hips. He wore a patterned shirt, unbuttoned and pushed back. Louis was shirtless, wearing black pants similar to Lestat's. From where I stood I saw him kneeling, back bowed as he leaned over to run his hand across Lestat's bare shoulder. His black hair was tied back carelessly, a striking contrast to his pale flesh.

"I was just checking to see if you were still out here. The torches…"

God, it even sounded lame to me. Lestat only smiled more widely and beckoned me to approach.

"Of course. You are ever the conscientious one." He caught Louis' reverent hand in his and pressed a kiss to the palm. Louis growled softly and stretched himself out to lie beside Lestat. I caught his gaze and after a moment, I lowered my eyes; Louis looked distinctly feral.

"No need to worry. " Lestat said softly, running his hand across Louis' chest. "His hunger is not aimed at you." He reached up with his free hand and dragged a shining fingernail down his throat, opening the flesh and releasing a freshet of crimson blood. Louis twisted his body, moaning, and latched on to the wound Lestat had opened.

Was Louis' hunger really ever for anyone else? I didn't think so. Louis clutched at Lestat, suckling strongly and pushing a leg between Lestat's thighs.

"Sit down, Brian, before you fall." Lestat said hoarsely. His eyes glittered and he shifted his body, pressing up against Louis. I sat down on the far edge of the banquette, trembling as though in the grip of a fever. The air about them was charged with menace and lust. Louis raised his head from Lestat's neck, blood smeared over his lips and in his teeth. His grin was ghastly, but, Christ, It was beautiful, too.

"Go on, Lestat. If it does not immolate him, perhaps it will keep him safe when we return."

Immolate? What the fuck. I watched them warily.

"You worry too much." Lestat said. His voice was a mere whisper; his throat ravaged, open and still seeping blood from where Louis had been feasting. "Come closer, _cher_. I am somewhat immobile."

Louis watched me, his tongue busily licking at his lips. When I drew closer, he snatched at my wrist, his hand moving so fast I never even saw him move. He pulled me forward and a moan escaped me when he pulled me up and across Lestat's taut thigh. Lestat did not move, he only watched as Louis took my hand and pressed it to his bleeding throat.

"Taste." Louis said, releasing my wrist. And so I did, moving instinctively back even as I stuck my stained fingers into my mouth.

Shivering, trembling heat, snaky, twisting its rapacious way through my veins in a way that I most definitely felt. My skin crawled with heat and unfamiliar sensation. I licked at my hand until there was nothing left to taste, memorizing the jolts of pleasure I felt, the tension that seemed to collect in the long muscles of my thighs. I wanted to move, to run even, but I remained still, darting intent glances at them, each glimpse shuttered, like photographs taken at high speed. Did I make any sound? I don't know. I only knew heat and their eyes upon me.

These small effects lasted for some little while before they faded slowly away, leaving me feeling a thirst that was beyond any I'd felt before. Immolating? Possibly, I thought as I rose shakily. They watched me expectantly.

"I'm thirsty." I said rustily. I went to the small bar area. There was a stock of beer and bottled water in the refrigerator and I took out several of the bottles, drinking them down one after another, pausing only because I needed to breathe. I stopped because I was full, but the thirst stayed with me, maddening and insistent. I went back to them, clutching and unopened bottle in one hand. Louis had predictably lost interest in me and lay with his face buried under the shelf of Lestat's jaw.

"Still thirsty?" Lestat asked in a raw whisper. I nodded. My skin still felt hot and somehow tight. "I remember that. I didn't know if it would happen to you. You had far less than I did the first time I tasted the blood of one of us." he mused. His left hand caressed Louis' back with mesmerizing slowness. "My blood marks you now. It may be enough to keep the others away from you."

I tried to concentrate on what he was saying, tried to make sense of it, but nothing made any sense except the brilliance of his eyes and the sounds Louis was making at his throat.

 

~~~~~

 

I woke up in my bed. The room was dark and cool, the shades and curtains drawn. I lay still for a while, collecting my thoughts and trying to remember how I had gotten here. I reached for the lamp on the night table and winced a little when I turned it on. There were several bottles of water sweating beads of condensation and I snatched one of them up, drinking greedily.

One of them must have carried me here because I had no memory of anything beyond Lestat talking about my thirst and something about his blood marking me. Carried me in, closed the shades and left me with bottles of water, and I. Didn't. Remember. I flopped backward on the bed and grimaced at my own smell. The clock informed me that it was 2:14 pm. I made myself get up and cautiously opened the bedroom door. The rest of the small cottage was dim, also shaded from the sun. I wondered about that. It was such a little bit of his blood. Would the sun really affect me? Lestat had said nothing specific about anything like that, but the drawn shades indicated some doubt. I went to draw a bath. I wanted some time to think.

 

### 

May, 1994

 

"Of course it didn't happen." Louis said irritably. You were here, you know it was forced upon him in such a manner that he believed it was happening. He has told you so himself." He waved a hand at the thick tome on the desk. "That is a narrative of what he was given to see."

"The others thought it was true? Armand?"

"Armand grasped at what he wanted to believe. Religion played quite a part in his mortal life as well as his immortal one. You know all this. You read it all."

He was clearly annoyed and I didn't really want to add to it, but the contradictions were confusing.

"You and Lestat have both told me that what has been written should be taken with quite a large grain of salt. Things omitted. Things invented." I pointed out in a carefully neutral voice. He turned around and looked at me as though I were a dull-witted child.

"You'll take my word for it, then. Armand believed it." Louis said in a slow drawl that conveyed the depth of his irritation. "It's well for him that he did, for I would have marked the whole incident as something he would undertake. I don't know why Lestat went through with publishing that. Are we done?"

I nodded and he swept past me without another word.

Of course I wasn't done; I always had questions, even if I didn't ask them all the time. When I was invited to ask, I always did. It had happened like that when he'd come into the office, and he'd seen the book. He'd asked me what I thought and I simply asked if any of it had really occurred. As will also sometimes happen, he just as quickly lost patience with my less-than-lightening-fast reasoning.

I'd gleaned a little something, though. He had suspected Armand had some sort of hand in it, at least until Armand had tried to kill himself. Lestat's lapse into that weird stasis after the whole strange mess preyed on his mind. Ironically, his obsession with whoever did have a hand in it had become a source of contention between them, although I was pretty sure that wasn't the only thing that had cropped up between them.

There were arguments. Drawn out silences and sometimes, one or the other of them would disappear for a while. It was one of those things that made you wonder just how superior they were to humans after all. Not to say that mortals ever get the whole love relationship thing right, but then again, we only had the one lifetime in which to work it out. One would hope that a pair who clearly needed to be together would have figured it out over the course of two hundred and some odd years.

It occurred to me that I hadn't asked him where Lestat was. Probably a good thing, considering how snappish Louis had been. I was usually in the office upstairs before they awakened if I had something I needed to discuss, but I'd been delayed in traffic, coming back from a day of endless errands. It was apparent that Lestat was not at home, and so I sat down to deal with mail and email and phone messages.

Except that the little red light wasn't winking at me as it did nearly every night, which meant either there weren't any phone messages or Lestat had already retrieved them. I hit the replay button to listen because he didn't always remember to tell me things like the roofers needed to reschedule or I was supposed to speak with one of the lawyers regarding any number of things.  
There was nothing like that on the machine, though. There was only one message and it was for Louis.

From Armand.

It was innocuous enough, just Armands' soft and oddly accentless voice stating that he was in New Orleans and would Louis have any free time to speak with him? I sat back in the chair, digesting it. Any number of things can cause Lestat's temper to flare, and I supposed that this message might well fall into that particular realm.

 

~~~~~

 

"What did you talk about?" Lestat asked, slipping out of his drenched jacket and shaking his head briskly.

"The book, mostly." I said, gesturing to the stack of them on the floor by the closet.

His brow furrowed slightly. "And that was the last time you saw him?"

I nodded. Louis hadn't been home for several days and Lestat was in a dark mood.

"He thinks I don't know he's holed up in that dreary room next door to Madame Miriam's."

"He probably knows you know." I said. "Not like he's hiding, or anything."

He was referring to the voodoo temple on North Rampart. Louis sometimes spent time speaking with the priestess there. I often wondered what their conversations were like.

He gave me a withering look. "And how would you know any of this?"

I looked away from his angry eyes. "He doesn't hide."

"Why would you say that?"

"Your arguments are hardly secretive." I muttered.

"You have more to say?" His eyes were gray March ice.

"You can tell what I'm thinking and it pisses you off but I can't help it." I said in a low voice. When he wanted answers he would get them on way or another.

"You know a lot, Brian, but you don't know everything. He hides. He hides as much as I do. He's wrapped up…wrapped…ah, _merde_. Enough of this." He passed a hand over his eyes. "I'm going now to speak to him. We may wish to fly the jet to New York in the next few days if he will consent to come along, just so you know."

 

### 

Late June, 1994

The sun had set upon our approach to LaGuardia airport and I heard them stirring as I taxied the little jet to the private hangar. I heard the intercom crackle followed by Lestat's voice telling me that they would be ready directly.

The recent storms had passed for the moment and they had been inseparable since Louis had come home again. I was not privy to the reconciliation but when I was with them I sensed some distance between them, passionate love-making aside. And it was passionate, no doubt about it. I heard it. I saw the after effects too, the mattresses destroyed, bed frames broken, plaster cracked, all telling me that their passion was on the violent side of late; their naked, sleeping bodies were bruised and lacerated, slowly healing over the course of the day, the sheets crimson-black with drying blood.

I didn't see them for a few nights after we arrived, though periodic excursions to the penthouse during the day revealed that their hunger continued to be more for one another than for the more mundane fare of mortal blood. This is not to say that I was sure they hadn't left the penthouse; anything is possible, but it didn't look that way. The clothes they'd arrived in were unwearable and the suitcase had not been touched.

Did I mention that there was, in fact a reason for the trip? Well, there was; an art showing at the Woodward, a new gallery in SoHo. Lestat had taken an interest in the artist, a shy, driven man who painted strange distorted cityscapes in violent, lurid colors. They were unlovely and garish but arresting, even to my untutored eye.

We arrived at the event fashionably late and upon our arrival the requisite flutes of champagne were presented and the owner came to greet Lestat and Louis, recognizing them from other visits, I have no doubt.

"Where's the artist?" I asked when Ms. Woodward politely moved off from her two clearly distracted guests.

"Feverishly painting in his loft, I should think. Take some of the markers, _cher_, so I can tag the works that I want." Lestat said. Louis had wandered off to examine one of the paintings. Seeing that I had finished mine, Lestat handed me his champagne and I followed him, feeling woefully ignorant and out of place. It didn't help that I had a whopper of headache. He didn't notice any discomfort on my part for a while, speaking animatedly about the works we looked at and tagging several of the ones he liked, including the one that had captured Louis' attention.

"You are unwell. You need to eat." he said, when I'd failed to respond to another of his comments. "There's a buffet upstairs. You can find me after you've had your fill, yes?."

I did, and as far as these sorts of affairs went the food was decent, if unspectacular. It went a good way in restoring me.

The second floor was open and airy, with railings along one side that allowed one to look down at the first floor. It looked a bit like a maze from above, filled with motion and color and the loud murmur that you always hear when there is a crowd of people. I spied Lestat's pale hair and leaned against the railing to watch him for a while. He'd attracted a small gaggle of female admirers and seemed to be enjoying the attention. Every now and then I heard his laughter even from where I stood.

I looked for Louis and finally saw him making his way toward Lestat, cleanly fielding any and all attempts at discourse. It was amusing to watch Lestat's flock of admirers become flustered when Lestat drew Louis to his side, following that action with a warm kiss. After a few minutes, they dispersed and the pair moved along together, headed for another section of as yet unviewed paintings. Their meandering, calm appearance made a distinct change a little while later and I followed the direction that they were looking in.

It was Armand. Nothing good could come of this; I knew it as well as I knew my own name and my stomach lurched uneasily. As I watched, Armand approached them and put his arms about Lestat's waist, kissing his cheek familiarly. I could see the stiffness in Lestat's shoulders from where I was and it was echoed in Louis' posture. They exchanged words and Armand left them, moving gracefully toward yet another of the immortals. Daniel, I assumed, from the color of his hair, somewhat darker than Lestat's.

Louis spoke into Lestat's ear and after a moment, Lestat nodded shortly and Louis went to where Armand stood with Daniel.

It was excruciating to watch for I expected some deadly violence to erupt at any moment. I couldn't understand why no one else felt the under current that seemed so obvious to me. I pushed my way to the stairs and went down to see if Lestat wanted to leave.

When I got to the bottom of the stairs, all the parties involved were no longer in the places that I had observed them in from above. My search ended abruptly when Daniel chose to take my elbow and steer me to a corner out of the flow of moving people.

I will take a moment to say that all of the vampires I have come into contact with have been invariably beautiful, each in their own way, and that it has nothing at all to do with what their personalities are like. I imagine this is because when vampire makes another, some part of it has to do with a physical attraction. I can't say this is a certain thing because I have not seen all of them, but it appears to be the rule rather than the exception. Daniel was a case in point, being arrestingly good-looking.

"I know you have this irresistible urge to rush to Lestat's side, but I think maybe you should wait a while." He gave me a brilliant smile. "I'm Daniel, by the way."

I nodded. "Brian." I automatically stuck my hand out and he just as automatically took it in his and gave it a brief shake. "But I guess you already knew that."

"Yeah. I'm really not trying to run interference here, man. He'll find you when he wants to, and it wouldn't be the best idea to go too near Armand and Louis just now."

I looked warily at him and he nodded in a commiserating manner. "I know where you're at, Brian. I do."

"I don't know what you're talking about." I told him.

"Resigning yourself to what you are denied doesn't mean you don't still want it." he said in a reasonable tone.

I saw no point in debating it with him; despite his friendly demeanor I had no reason to trust him.

"For what it's worth, I don't see how it's any of your business what I want or don't want. It has nothing to do with whatever the hell is happening right now."

He put his hands up placatingly. "Fair enough. But I should point out that what's happening right now has nothing to do with you. I know you have no reason to trust me, but I'm sayin' stay out of it. It's safer if you do, though I don't suppose your own safety is high on your priorities list. It's something that goes back a long way."

"And what? You're just here for the art show, I suppose." He had a pretty good handle on how I felt, but that didn't mean I had to acknowledge it.

He shrugged. "I'm not sure why I came, tell you the truth. We're barely on speaking terms as it is." he said, nodding to where Armand had appeared at the far corner of the room. He was still speaking to Louis who had lost whatever initial interest he may have had in what Armand wanted to talk to him about.

Lestat appeared through the crowd and approached us. "Is Marius in New York?" he asked. Daniel nodded.

"He'll be along. He said he had something to take care of first."

I could see Louis beyond Lestat's shoulder. Armand placed a hand on his shoulder and a spasm of anger crossed Louis' features. He brushed Armand's hand away and turned from him.

Lestat nodded curtly. "There's one more painting I wish to tag, so if you will excuse us?" He took my upper arm in an iron grip and steered me away from Daniel and toward a group of paintings on one of the long partitions.

"I shall roast Marius when next I see him." Lestat muttered. He fixed a bid onto one of the paintings and then turned to me. "What did Daniel have to say to you?"

There was no use in trying to give an evasive answer. "He warned me not to get too close to Louis and Armand. Or you, for that matter."

"Did he? Whatever for?"

"He told me I should stay out of…whatever was going on. I was only going to see if you wanted to leave."

"I'm damned to the depths of hell if I will let Armand drive me from here or anywhere else until I'm ready to leave." he seethed. If I hadn't been sure of it before, I was now; Lestat was coldly furious. "Did he have any other advice?"

"Nothing important." I mumbled. He looked as though he might pursue the thought, but his head came up and his shoulders relaxed the smallest amount because Louis was walking toward us.

"Have you finished, mon cher?" Lestat asked. Louis merely nodded and Lestat continued, "Daniel said that Marius will be making an appearance. Shall we wait for him, or would you like to leave?"

"If you wish to see Marius, then of course we will stay." Louis said, taking Lestat's hand. "Have you put your bids in?"

"I have, and generous ones at that. I believe I should like to leave; there is every chance that Marius will have those fledglings of his along and I am in no mood."

"I'll go bring the car around." I said, and Lestat nodded absently, leaning to push his nose into Louis' black hair.

 

~~~~~

And so I brought them back to their penthouse and they went upstairs like lovers and like lovers they were entwined together when I looked in on them the next day, standing motionless and enthralled at the beauty of their limbs closed about one another, perfect flesh, beautiful, silky hair and fingers interlaced.

Several nights later, Louis went off to hunt and Lestat wanted company walking through Central Park. I didn't refuse, of course, and it wasn't because of his teasing that there was nothing so dangerous in the Park as he himself was. It was a pleasant night, cool but not cold and Lestat was in good spirits—at least until he sensed Armand's presence and The Scene ensued.

Armand, dressed like a young mortal in faded jeans and a sweatshirt, walked up beside Lestat, easily keeping pace with Lestat's longer stride. I moved off to the side somewhat.

"To what do I owe this dubious honor?" Lestat asked, heavy on the sarcasm.

"You left so abruptly the other night, Lestat. We had no chance for conversation, you and I." Armand looked up at Lestat, a sweet expression on his boyish face.

"And what would we have to talk about, Armand? I think we ran out of conversation in Miami."

"That was years ago, _caro_. So much has happened since then, has it not? We should catch up as old friends do." He pushed his hair back from his face. "And may I say that it does my heart good to see you and Louis together."

There was thick tension between them and such dark malice from Armand that I felt queasy. Armand's sweet face gave nothing away; the malignancy was very much beneath the surface.

"Lestat, I am astonished, for I admit I did not think it in you to keep Louis so—-content. He was so distraught when he thought you were gone from him, those many years ago in Paris." He sighed theatrically. "And he did pine for you. For years he did. We became very close, Louis and I."

Lestat snorted disbelievingly.

"Close? You followed him around like a puppy. If that's what you call close."

"If you had been there, I will admit that Louis would not have given me much thought at all. But you weren't there, were you?" He licked his lips. His skin was tawny, much like Lestat's, remnants of his own foray into the light of the sun. "After years of mourning you, he turned finally to me. He is your fledgling but he was my lover, finally, when you were no longer there for him."

I glanced nervously at Lestat; his fury was palpable. I wanted to shout at him, scream that the words coming from Armand's angelic mouth were evil lies, but I was dumbstruck, something I wondered at later on.

"And because he is your fledgling," Armand continued in his soft voice, "You cannot see his thoughts, can you? You cannot know of the intimacies we shared." His tongue flicked at a silvery line of saliva at the corner of his mouth. "But you are together now and I am happy for you both. You have each other in a way Louis and I did not." His voice had a distant musing quality as he went on. "When I think of his skin I could weep. Lestat, you did such a magnificent job in bringing him to us. Such a beauty. Such a beautiful soul. The silky cream of his skin, the tautness of him. He was never of the mortal world. No, never." He looked sidewise at Lestat, his eyes large and soft as he spoke Louis' name. "And the flush that comes to Louis' skin when....ahh, well. You know of what I speak, do you not? Marius has painted cherubim that were of no comparison to him." He gazed, misty-eyed, into the near distance. "And the sounds he made, oh, yes...heartbreaking, I must say. That's what he was. Heartbreaking. And you,not there. I tried to do well by him, to satisfy him. Repeatedly I tried. He was so exquisite, so very exquisite when I entered him." he sighed longingly.

"Satisfy him? You tried to satisfy him? Yes, well I am sure you tried many things, little Amadeo" Lestat sneered "But what happened? Not much I'll wager."

"Yes, I did." Armand said, complacently, "Over and over again. Louis has demonic stamina in bed. It must be in the blood, no? "

Incredibly, he was looking Lestat up and down, slowly licking his lips.

"I may not have been there, Amadeo...and we know why I was not, the two of us, eh? No, I may not have been there but I know Louis. I know what makes his mouth water." Lestat said, fingering his throat. "Is it you? You, a pale shadow of your own maker, unable to keep him interested for more than a few decades? Please. Marius left you and he never looked back. Did you ever wonder why this should be so?"

"Longer than you had with _your_ maker." Armand shot back in a brief flash of anger. "But, I digress..."

"Nothing to signify." Lestat interrupted. "I had no previous relationship with Magnus. Whereas you..."

Armand broke in, smoothly turning the subject back.

"I must say I was quite happily surprised at those sounds Louis made, the hissing...the moaning. All quite delicious! And the wondrous sound he made when I penetrated him; there are no words."

"Reading my thoughts again? You have no words because it did not happen." Lestat snapped.

I had no voice, only the helpless feeling of watching Lestat fall into his web.

"Ah. But it did happen." Armand murmured insinuatingly to Lestat. "It eats at you that it did. Corrosive, like acid, isn't it? That someone should possess Louis other than yourself. I know had you been there it would not have been so, but you weren't. This hurts you, does it not? As it would me, were he my fledgling."

Armand's voice was mild and hateful and I wanted more than anything to make him just disappear. I hated seeing him get to Lestat and to do it so easily, preying upon Lestat's biggest weakness. And because I loved Lestat I did not want to see him like this, arguing with Armand about Louis as though Louis were a prize to be won. Armand knew it, too. He gave me a quick, malevolent smirk and in that moment I hated him, wished him burned to a cinder in the sun.

"No. I was not there and we both know why, do we not? Care to tell me why he left?"

"He knew you to be alive. He said so often. How it hurt him that you would not look for him, come to him."

"You have ever been a liar. Do you think that I believe you now?"

"No, ours was not a long union. Short and sweet I should say." he said reminiscently, as if he heard nothing that Lestat said. "Very sweet." He turned to focus on Lestat. "But, truly, I am happy for both of you, together again. And Louis is none the worse for wear. Not much, anyway."

He reached his hand to Lestat's face, touching his cheek."Louis is angered for fear of your reaction should you find out. He thinks on telling you as we speak."

He smiled an enigmatic Mona Lisa smile, malevolently peaceful and wound his arms about Lestat's neck, pressing his slight body tight to Lestat's taller form.

"Is that supposed to impress me?" Lestat snapped, stepping back. "Happy. Oh yes. Happy for us, as you are with your fledgling, the one that you dangled on the end of your cock for...what? Ten years? You may have been able to dazzle that poor drunken mortal, but your lies and you tricks could not hold Louis to you, could they? And fear? Louis fears nothing, least of all me."

"Dazzle Daniel? I did no such thing. And what of your fledgling? Louis fears for you, Lestat. You know he does. And impress you? No. I've seen better. Much better. But now you know where it's been."

Another angelic smile, as he turned away. "Farewell, Lestat. Tell Louis that I think of him often. And thank you for being so generous..."

"Your delusions have ever been a source of amusement to me, Monsieur Le Coven Master." Lestat growled, turning from Armand at last and moving back along the path at such a rate that I was hard pressed to keep up with him.

When he slowed down I stepped up beside him. Ready to try and reason him out of the anger I still felt pulsing around him. Before I could say anything, though, he spoke.

"It would be better, Brian, if you didn't say anything just now. I know that your intentions are good ones, but I am past all patience. Now, what?"

I looked questioningly at him and that was when I realized there was someone ahead of us on the path. Two men, it turned out, each of them holding guns on us. Lestat shoved me hard and I fell to the ground in a confusion of swearing and shouting from the attackers, followed by a gunshot. I rolled and looked up to see Lestat snap an arm back, catching one of the men across the chest and hurling him back with amazing force. He didn't stir after he'd hit the ground.

"You chose the wrong night to fuck with me, mortal." Lestat growled. The attacker had forgotten his gun altogether, holding it loosely in his hand even as Lestat grabbed him and snaked his head forward. The man cried out sharply and Lestat forced him to the ground, teeth sunk deeply into the side of the man's neck. The gun clattered harmlessly from his weakly spasming hand.

I knelt, heart pounding and watched Lestat drain the life from the man. When he'd finished he dropped the body and sank back on his haunches, uttering a snarling, throaty laugh. There was a light somewhere behind me and in the lurid orange glow, the blood on his mouth looked black.

He got to his feet, staggering a little as he licked his lips. He extended his hand and after a moment of staring at it dumbstruck. I took it and he hauled me up.

"Now you have seen." He said, his voice thick.

He spoke no more, pressing me to hurry back to the penthouse and leaving me at the entrance to the building. I did not see him again that night or the night after.

 

NEXT: Part Five, 2 of2


	6. Chapter 6

### 

Chapter Six   
(1994 - Part 2 of 2)

**

### July, 1994

**

I was not privy to what happened after we left the park that night but it was reasonable to guess that there had been an argument of some magnitude since Lestat left for New Orleans while Louis elected to stay behind.

"I would appreciate it if you would stay here with Louis with the jet at his disposal. He prefers more regular methods of transport, as you know." Lestat said. His measured tone gave me to understand that he was in no mood for any sort of curiosity on my part. "He does not need to be looked after, as I am sure you are well aware, but I want you to be available if he should need anything.

"Of course." I said, feeling much less sure than I sounded.

"I have left something for you on the sideboard in your living room" he said with a feral little grin. "A little insurance, you might say. Good night, Brian."

The 'insurance' was a small vial filled with his blood, that dark, rich essence that I'd been craving since he'd conferred a small drink upon me this past winter.

I waited three nights before I finally drank it, taking all of it greedily and at once instead of the drop I'd told myself I would allow myself so as to make the small gift last. It was a good thing that Louis did not seek me out that night, for I'd been stupefied with the power of it, the tingling, alien life that I felt fusing with my own poor blood. I sat on the high balcony of my darkened flat, staring out into the fantastic glow that is a New York City summer's night, listening to the traffic and drifting along in a sort of dazed trance.

Sleeping through most of the next day was not unusual, since I'd grown accustomed to sleeping for at least part of the day in order to accommodate myself to Lestat and Louis' schedule. The ravening thirst I felt upon awakening was unusual though, the same thirst I remembered from when Lestat had last given me his blood.

Not that I had to worry about Louis looking for me. I didn't see him for a good two weeks after Lestat left and I spent my evenings trying out New York restaurants and progressing from there to checking out the bar scene. Sometimes I ate with Sal, the manager of the building that housed their penthouse and the apartment I occupied, but more often than not I went on my own. I knew people in New York but I felt apart from the things that went on around me and no amount of mingling seemed to mitigate the distance.

I'd found a bar on West 40th called Dewey's and I started showing up there two or three times a week to down a few brews and make small talk with the regulars; it was just the amount of social interaction I felt comfortable with. I was sitting at the bar there when I finally saw Louis.

I didn't see him come in or anything like that, I just felt his hand on my shoulder and when I turned he was there, eyes more sharply focused upon me than I had come to expect. He seated himself on the empty stool beside me. I signaled the bartender to bring another beer and Louis thanked him when the mug was set before him. He sniffed delicately and blinked, curving his fingers around the handle.

"I am not intruding?"

"Hardly." I told him. I had a hard time keeping my eyes from him, yet at the same time I was unable to meet his gaze for very long. "Did you need me for something?"

"Not as such. I smell Lestat in you. Faint, but still there."

I glanced around to see if anyone had taken note of the odd remark. I didn't really need to worry, though—bars are anonymous places and people are nearly always absorbed with whoever has attracted their attention at the time.

"He left—he left some in a little bottle." I said, acutely uncomfortable beneath his grave stare. He nodded and lifted the mug of beer to his mouth, taking a small sip. I watched him, fascinated. It was the first time I'd seen either one of them actually eat or drink anything other than blood. He grimaced slightly and put the mug back on the bar.

"You think me stubborn for remaining here." he stated with sudden accusatory flatness.

"No. No, I don't even know what happened."

"You can surmise easily enough."

I heard irritation in his voice. "I can surmise, but that doesn't mean I'd be right. And I wasn't thinking anything of the sort." I said.

He calmed a bit. I had noticed quite some time ago that Louis dislikes amplified subservience on my part. In certain moods he much prefers a more challenging tone. This realization hit me when I heard the peremptory change in his attitude.

"Why are you still in New York?"

"Lestat asked me to stay in case you should wish me to take you—anywhere."

"Take me home, you mean."

"Anywhere," I repeated. I tipped my mug up and drained the last of my beer. He switched the mugs after I set it down and exhaled strongly through his nose.

"It's always about possession. Always." he muttered. "Drink that."

I took swallow from his mug. "I think it was about your convenience." I said.

"You would see it that way. However, I think I know him a little better than you do, yes?"

Of course he did. He didn't really want an answer, anyway. "Getting back to supposition." he went on. "You were with him when he saw Armand in the park, yes?"

I nodded warily.

"You heard what passed between them. You have observed Lestat's possessive, nay, his jealous nature on other occasions. I think, then, you have a fairly clear idea of what passed between us before he took his leave."

I wasn't really sure why he was pressing the issue, but it didn't seem like a good idea to argue the point and never mind that he would prefer some mettle as opposed to submissiveness on my part.

"I figured it was to do with Armand, yeah. He really put the screws to Lestat. Pissed him off in a big way."

"Armand has a knack for such things." Louis said.

"That's an understatement." I said, remembering my own anger just listening to Armand and how upsetting it was to see him getting under Lestat's skin so effortlessly. Louis looked sharply at me and I wondered what he saw or picked up or whatever it was they did. After an acutely long moment, he glanced away.

"Are you finished?" he said at length. I nodded. "Come with me, then."

We went outside and he hailed a cab with such a mortal air that gaped stupidly at him even as he reached to open the door.

"21st and Irving." he told the driver. He settled back and said nothing else for the length of the drive. When the driver dropped us off, Louis waited patiently as I paid and when the car pulled away he crossed the street, gesturing for me to follow him.

He stopped before a beautiful old brownstone. "I lived in this building with Armand." he stated. "It was from this place that I finally walked away from him."

A lot of things had passed through my mind on the cab ride to this place, but this has not been one of them. He looked at me and I felt like he must be expecting some remark from me.

"When?" I asked, because I couldn't for the life of me think of anything else to say.

He shrugged. "1935 or thereabouts. It was after Lestat had gone to the earth, I know that. I didn't know it then, however. I knew Lestat was alive, but I didn't know where he was or why he had not come to find me and I didn't know how injured he'd been or that Armand had been the one to lay him so low. Neither was I privy to what he had done to my poor, doomed Claudia beyond what I had known at the time of her destruction."

"Why did you go with him?" I blurted. "Why him?"

"He was a link." Louis said simply. "That was what I told myself, anyway. A link to Lestat, a Lestat I had not known, a newly made vampire daring to break the rules laid down for centuries because he saw no point to them." A fleeting smile crossed his lips and thawed a little of the coolness in his green eyes. "Gradually I woke from my grief over Claudia to find that I did not believe Lestat had also been destroyed. Had I not been so numb I might have realized it sooner." He hesitated for a moment, and I waited to see if he would continue. I wouldn't have been surprised if he left the conversation dangling; he'd done it before. Not this time, though. "There was one other reason. At the time the very idea of being alone was unbearable to me and so I left with Armand."

He tucked his hair behind his ears in a gesture that had become entirely familiar to me. When he spoke Louis was deliberate and thoughtful, choosing his words carefully and he often presaged his thoughts with that particular gesture. Still gazing at the brownstone, he continued.

"There were many things that stood between Lestat and me. Barbed words. Cruelties and mistrust. Jealousies—mine as well as his. And Lestat's fear. I hated that. I hated that he had so little faith in what I felt for him." He turned from his perusal of the building with its warmly lighted windows. "I hated it then and I hate it now. Do you see?"

I did, or I thought I did. I even thought I understood what he meant by Lestat's fear. It was the fear that Louis would leave him. Why else mistrust and jealousy? Why else try to drive him off before he might leave of his own accord?

"Why else?" Louis said, echoing my thought perfectly. I knew, then, that it wasn't a flash of sudden understanding, but a brief vision that he'd shown me. Understanding came when I realized just how much that mistrust hurt him.

September, 1994

After a brief stay in Atlanta, we returned to New Orleans in August. In spite of the beastly heat and wretched humidity it was good to be home again, good to be back on Royal St. where I knew the people that lived around me and the smells and sounds were familiar and comforting.

That familiar comfort was important; Lestat and Louis were on careful speaking terms but there remained an aloofness that played on my nerves even though it had nothing at all to do with me. The politely strained conversations and long silences were in many ways worse than their battles; it was unlike them to be cool toward one another; passion usually reigned. Lestat's habit of picking at the edges of things drove Louis to this reserved chill. He would tell Lestat to just say what he meant and Lestat would unleash a bitter torrent that they both knew had little or nothing to do with what actually stood between them and Louis would just close in upon himself.

And how did I know this? I was often witness to such things. Neither of them had any qualms about expressing themselves in extreme ways in front of me; embarrassment was not something that occurred to them and neither did politesse. I was not a victim to be lulled or a mortal that had no idea just what sort of creatures they were and so such pretense was cast aside where I was concerned. Lestat might summon me to go over his plans for a renovation or a change in the garden and by the time I walked across the courtyard it would be forgotten because they had once again engaged in the clash of wills that seemed never to end.

Such a scene took place one muggy September night when I was with Lestat in the adjoining townhouse to theirs. Work had been underway for some time to renovate and refurbish it to Lestat's taste and he'd come with me to inspect the painting that had just been completed.

"How does it look in the daylight?" he asked me after he'd pronounced the red currant color of the walls and the cream trim to be acceptable.

"Richer. You can see more of the purple tones in it when it's bright in here." I said. He asked me things like that now and then and I wondered how the color appeared to him with his enhanced vision. He had commented on a number of occasions how dull and dreary things seemed to him when he had seen once again through mortal eyes.

"Impossibly dim." he'd said, "Except when I stepped out into winter sunlight. Only then did I feel that I was seeing properly."

"I can see the purple in it." he said absently. "It's fine. When the floors are refinished we can get down to furnishing the place. Perhaps not so 18th century, but keeping an elegant feel, yes?"

When we went back to their townhouse, Louis was back from wherever he'd been.

"Ah, Louis. Would you like to see how things are coming along next door?" Lestat asked.

Louis gazed at him. "I am certain that your plans are coming together as you would wish them to, Lestat. However, you will forgive me if yet another renovation fails to hold my interest as much as last night's unfinished discussion."

I took a step back and watched Lestat's face. His expression was bland, giving no hint at all to what he was thinking, even though Louis' pointed remark was an obvious challenge. I wanted to slink from the room, but Lestat was standing directly in the doorway and when they were intent this way it felt safer to remain still and unnoticed.

"Unfinished? How so?"

"You want to know something of me, yet you have not asked. Why is that?"

Lestat sighed heavily. "We went through all this in New York. What is the point of rehashing it yet again?"

"If we went through all of this in New York, why did you bring it up last night?" Louis challenged.

"It was a passing comment." Lestat said, exasperated.

"Ah. I see. You may make comments and I am expected not respond."

"When I asked you in New York, you saw fit not to respond." Lestat muttered through clenched teeth..

"You are angry. Always, this anger this possessive, unreasoning anger. Armand does not matter, yet you will dwell upon what may or may not have passed between us when I believed you lost."

The room crackled with tension. When Louis spoke Armand's name, Lestat bared his fangs in a brief snarl. "And you will push the issue all the while refusing to tell me what may or may not have passed between you." Lestat sneered. "You have always known how to put me past all patience, Louis."

Louis regarded him steadily. "I can only surmise that you believe I am made of stone. I have watched you walk away from me time and again and when you return I am told your dalliances meant nothing and I am expected to believe it. Akasha meant nothing? David, who you brought over to this life? Did that mean nothing?" He wielded his words with surgical precision, each cut deep and accurate. "How, then, is it different for me? Was it so dreadful that I might wish for companionship in my desolation? Or was it he whom I chose to be my companion? Perhaps I would not have been drawn to him at all in the beginning had you chosen to share something – anything -of yourself with me."

"Perhaps not, but you knew what he'd done to bring you to his side." Lestat said tonelessly.

"As I knew what you'd done to keep me there." Louis' voice was wintery. "I love you, Lestat. I always have, but that does not mean that I care to be fought over like a bone between two wolves and it does not mean I care to be told I am what matters to you, yet I am continually pushed away because you refuse to let go of your anger and your fear."

"And just what is it that you think I am so afraid of? Dare I ask such a thing and expect a straightforward answer?"

"If you cannot see it for yourself, Lestat, you will only bristle at whatever I say to you." Louis said with implacable calm. Lestat threw up his hands in frustration.

Louis took that moment to notice my presence. "Brian, leave us be, if you would." he said without rancor. Lestat glared at me but moved aside and I left the room with a strong sense of relief. It's never pleasant to witness what should really be a private confrontation, but as I said, neither of them thought much about whether or not I was present most of the time. I can only think that the stomach churning anxiety I'd been experiencing had distracted Louis somewhat.

The door closed behind me and I left the flat, breathing in the rainy air of the courtyard in an effort to calm myself.

 

### 

October, 1994

 

Nothing was resolved as the weeks slipped by, even though the arguments had ceased. Lestat was trying his level best to make things right between them but Louis's mood turned restive and somewhat vague and it added to the oppressive atmosphere that lingered like smoke in the air about them. The tension built, feeding on the frustrated silences that sat between them.

The silence broke at last.

I was working out of my living room when it happened, going over bids for some work that was being done at a house they'd purchased out by Grand Lake. I worked in the office in their flat during the day, but when they were awake it seemed a good idea to stay out of the way unless I was summoned. I had the air conditioning off and the windows open. There was a cool breeze blowing, presaging rain but comfortable for the time being and a thankful change from recirculated air.

I heard them outside and it became immediately apparent that it was a confrontation. I got up from the table and turned the tensor lamp to the wall before I approached the window. They were near the fountain, facing one another and I could see them well enough since the unobtrusive garden lighting was on. They had come in through the gate to the carriageway and it was obvious that were already embroiled in the conversation.

"These thoughts are not with me every waking moment, _mon cher_, but when they come they are strong." Louis said. "You did not come to me because you knew I would not let you go? Why would I? Why? Might it be because I love you? That I loved you from the first moment I saw you? Perhaps I was wrong to think that you felt the same thing for me. God knows the fledglings you have made since me were to give you something that apparently I could not. You were infatuated with David when he was mortal. I was there when you went to see him in London, remember?"

"I remember." Lestat said distantly. His hands were clenched at his sides.

"Yes. Of course you do. And you went to him after you faced the sun and he helped you and I suppose I should be grateful to him for that, at least. You knew when you came to me in that body that I would not turn you. You knew it." Louis crossed his arms over his chest and hugged himself as though he felt chilled. "Maybe it was another attempt kill yourself. Have me do it for you. After all, I have tried killing you before, have I not?"

"Louis, please. Tell me what you want of me. Tell me what I can do to—-to ease you. I cannot bear to see you this way." Lestat's voice was low, strained.

Louis looked at him, anguished. "Don't you see, Lestat? That is precisely the problem. You can do nothing about it. Nothing. I know you love me. I know you are sorry, but there is nothing you can do to fix it. All your promises, sweet promises said in passion—and I do believe that you believed your own words—came to what? You loved me before you left, yet still you went. When you went into the sun, even then, you did not come to me. Not. A. Word. Correct me if I am wrong here. Lestat, but I don't recall you saying to me that you loved me well but had decided to kill yourself anyway." His anger was a palpable thing, shimmering heat, though his face was smooth and expressionless.

"I wasn't even sure until I actually did it that I would go through with it." Lestat said in a deadened voice. He met Louis' gaze. "I could not say good-bye to you. I couldn't." He took a step, but Louis raised a hand as though to stop both speech and movement. His face was still immobile but his eyes blazed.

"You couldn't say good-bye. In the end seeing me was of no consequence."

Lestat took another step forward and reached to take Louis' arm. Louis pulled away. "Don't touch me, Lestat. Just don't."

"It wasn't like that." Lestat protested. "That was my weakness, my rashness. I felt so far away from things, disconnected as though I were drifting along." He looked at Louis miserably. "I know how it sounds."

"I never let you go, Lestat." Louis stated.

"I know you didn't. I didn't want to think of how you would react."

"What does that fucking mean?" Louis asked vehemently. "You know what you are to me yet you felt disconnected. You chose to leave. I can accept even that. God knows no one can control you and I would never try even if I could. But that you did not come to me first, that is what I will never understand! Do you know how I found out? David. David called me from the Motherhouse in London. David. For the love of God!" Louis shook his head disbelievingly. "Then the mad plan. You did turn to me then, though I can't imagine why since you had already made up your mind." Louis laughed bitterly, a jagged, glassy sound. "Coming to me in that body and begging me to bring you over. How could you do it? You say you love me, yet you would ask that of me? After you left that I night, I could make no sense of my existence."

He shoved Lestat hard. The move was so sudden and so quick that it took Lestat completely off guard and he stumbled backward. It was the only time I ever saw him less than graceful. His face was a mask.

"I had a thought, you know." Louis rasped. "It would not leave my mind; it boiled and seethed, gnawed with little rat teeth. Do you know what it was? Do you?"

"Louis, --"

Louis ignored him. "I thought if I killed you, then you would be freed at last and I could end my own life. At last."

Lestat gasped, a short, wounded sound and my own gasp echoed his. You who read this may ask why I do it. Listen. Watch. Grotesque, lurking voyeurism. It must seem so, I suppose, but again I say that for them whether I was there listening or somewhere else entirely meant nothing to them, not when they were lost to one another in their violent, beautiful intimacy and not now, when they were attempting to sift through layers of pain and anger and things more hidden from the light of day then they themselves are. As well say do not watch the moon rise or the stars come out each night: my presence was not an intrusion because it was unnoticed.

"In the end I couldn't do it. It was not your body, your beauty, but I knew it was you, I knew it was your essence trapped in a shell of mortality once again. I couldn't do it, couldn't harm you in that vulnerable state. My weakness was my love for you. I thought then that I would take my own life. I thought of ways that such a thing might be done. David would help you, after all, and it was likely that you would manage to get one of the others to turn you, to get what you wanted." He looked at Lestat, his eyes glittering and remote. "You know that I could do it. The reason that you survived your face to face with the sun, my love, is that you did not want to die."

"Why now, Louis?" Lestat asked. "Why did you take me back after all that? Why have we lived together happily for the most part, for these past ten years? Why stay with me? Do you still wish to die?" The last was not a threat, but an agonized question that Lestat spat out like a chunk of bitter poison.

"Why did I take you back? You do all the taking, Lestat, just as you do all the discarding. You know as well as I do that it was you who reclaimed me. I remember it well. I wanted you back and back you came, oh yes, but it was you who laid claim as you did from the beginning. The bloodthirst is a meaningless thing when I think of how I love you. We have lived together, as you say, because that is what we both desired. Too many times I have thought you lost to me, and I don't speak of it because simply thinking about it makes me feel as though I am falling, alone and cold. Don't you understand? I could never leave you. I don't even have words for how I feel about you; just the thought of you makes my mouth well up and I want to eat you, fuck you, smear myself with your blood—consume you, and still that would not be enough. That is why I know it will be you who does the leaving for I do not have that in me. The memories of the past lie uneasy and sometimes I need to be away, as if I must practice for what may happen again. But kill myself? The only way you will rid yourself of me is to do it yourself. Even should we part, you will never be alone, at least not while I walk the earth. What I want from you now is time. Only time and we have enough of that and to spare."

Louis reached and stroked Lestat's cheek softly with the back of his knuckles and Lestat closed his eyes. Louis made an agile twist and leap to the top of the wall and then he was gone.

~~~~~

It was weeks before he came back and Lestat did not weather the separation very well. He didn't speak to me much during that time and very often he warned me away. The papers told of random killings and disappearances and the fact that it was so noticeable spelled out his reckless distress. The articles, ever more strident, spoke of damage to the tourist trade and stepped-up police presence. No policeman visited the townhouse, no reporters put anything together, but I saw the thread running through those articles. Any attempt on my part to reassure Lestat was met with waspish frustration.

"You don't need to coddle me," he said testily one night, "I know perfectly well what he said to me that night."

I thought it prudent to step back quietly from the blue blaze of his eyes.

"Alright, fine." I said, "But you might want to tone down the feeding frenzy a little or at least move it off to another area." I tossed the paper on the desk and he batted it to the floor.

"Oh, by all means, Brian." he snapped. "Do you think that worries me?" He kicked at the newspaper petulantly.

"Not now." I said, trying for a reasonable tone. "But when Louis comes home the last thing you will want is unwanted attention from the police or worse.

He glared at me and I shrugged placatingly.

"Fine. You actually have a point." he said, relenting. "Now go home before I lose whatever shreds there are left of my patience.

 

~~~~~

 

I saw Louis once during weeks he was absent. He stopped me somewhere around four in the morning as I wove my way home from Dauphine St.

"You are out very late." he said, eyeing me up and down and wrinkling his nose a little.

Drunk as I was, my tongue ran way ahead of my brain. "Where have you been? Are you coming home?" I asked, shifting unsteadily from one foot to the other.

"I have been around." he said enigmatically. He looked arresting, wearing neoprene and leather. His eyes were ringed with kohl. "As you have been, it would seem."

"Just out with a few friends." I muttered. I wondered if the liquor I'd consumed was making me see the luminescent shimmer around him, or if it was a trick of the light and the humidity.

"And going home alone again." He gave me a gentle push and we crossed the street.

I peered owlishly at him, trying to interpret what he was thinking. It was a useless effort, since I was not usually able to do it even when I had all my wits about me.

"Are you coming home?" I repeated. I couldn't seem to stop looking at him and as a result I stumbled on the uneven banquette. He caught my arm and steadied me.

"I will come home when I am ready to come home."

"Lestat…" I began.

"Lestat knows this and you do too, though I am quite sure you are incapable of very much in the way of cognitive thought at the moment."

"I'm trying to figure out if I should be insulted or not."

His mouth twitched a little. "Not at all. It was not a judgment, only an observation made by one who had a fair share of such nights at one time. You should have a care, cher. There are dangerous sorts around at this time of the morning."

"I can see that." I said a bit feverishly. The kohl beneath his eyes was smudged in a beguiling way.

"And now you are on Royal Street." He said. "You can make your way home safely enough from here, I should think." He paused for a moment. "How does mon ange?"

I gaped at him, surprised. "He's reckless." I said immediately. "But a little better the past two weeks or so. At least it seems that way to me."

"He came looking for me. We had a brief word." Louis acknowledged. "Go home, Brian. Sleep it off."

He waited until I turned and started up the street. When I looked back he was gone.

### 

December, 1994

Louis came home in early December and they secluded themselves in one of their Garden District properties for a week or so, during which time I longed for a reason to drop by. There was no reason of course, and me and my curiosity just had to deal with it.

I was encouraged when Lestat called to instruct me to make travel arrangements for them. He wanted snow and cold weather, he said, and a snug, secluded place to stay for the duration of the winter holidays. No mean feat at such a late date, but I got to work on it and after a few days of recommendations and tracking down numbers, and a little creative bribery, I secured a place for them in Vermont.

I flew them up there and when we left New Orleans everything seemed fine, although we were late in taking off. We arrived in Vermont just after dawn and while they slept in the cabin, I rented a vehicle and drove up to the chalet to make sure everything was in order. A few details needed tweaking, but all in all everything was ready and I went back to the airport to pick them up.

Something had happened; not an argument, at least not one that was still in progress, but when I went into the hanger, I found them out of the plane wearing nothing but their robes, Lestat kneeling on the floor beside Louis with his arms wrapped about Louis's body.

The cold can't harm them, but they most certainly feel it. Louis in particular seems to crave warmth; he shivered in Lestat's embrace. I drove the Cherokee right up to them and opened the back door for them. The interior was warm, but I climbed into the cabin of the jet and fetched the blankets discarded on the floor. Lestat took them from me with a short nod of thanks. I drove out of the hanger and when I glanced in the rearview, Lestat had managed to swaddle both Louis and himself beneath them. Louis had his head on Lestat's shoulder, eyes closed. Lestat met my glance in the mirror with a troubled look.

"You have seen this place?" he said after a moment.

"Yes. It's all ready, wood laid in the fireplaces, heat turned up and everything just as you asked."

"You are going to visit your family?"

"Yeah." I said rather heavily. "I'll see how that goes. I might end up somewhere else, but I have the mobile phone with me."

He nodded distractedly and pressed his cheek to the top of Louis' head.

I brought in what little luggage they had. Louis went immediately to one of the chairs by the fireplace and sat down, eyes distant. Lestat walked with me to the door.

"Thank you, Brian." he said. "And you needn't worry, in spite of appearances. I will make things right this time, though I believe I have my work cut out for me. I will call you when we are ready to leave."

I nodded, still hesitant. "Maybe I should take a room in town somewhere for a day or two—"

"Not necessary, cher. Au revoir."

"Good bye, then." I said. He smiled briefly and I stepped out on the porch, pulling the door shut behind me.

 

~~~~~

 

And so I went to Boston and I drove through the decaying housing project that I once called home. I saw people I knew but I didn't stop and none of them spare a second look; I left there when I was sixteen and I had only been back once, when I helped my parents move from the ratty second floor apartment to the house I bought them in Ipswich. No one seemed to recognize me and I suppose that's as it should be. I had long since closed the book on those days.

The visit with my parents was tense and uncomfortable as I had known it would be with my father thawing only after he'd lubricated himself with several glasses of whiskey. My mother never retreated from the icy fortress of her belief that I was the worst of sinners, though she unbent enough to give me a stiff embrace when I arrived. My brother Mick came from Gloucester to spend a day and that was a good day. We spent it away from the house for the most part, bending elbows and catching up in one of the pubs in town. I left a few days after he did, an idea having taken hold in my mind.

I drove south into the Berkshires spent a week looking at property there, isolated places for the most part. After all, I had a lot of money and much of it was pretty much doing nothing more than collecting interest so I figured I might as well spend it. I thought a place of my own, a place I could retreat to from time to time might be a good idea. I settled on a cabin surrounded by twenty-three acres of forested land. Nine of the acres were under a spring-fed lake and the cabin sat on the east side of that lake.

The place needed work and while I waited to hear from them I stayed busy drawing up reconfiguration plans that would include a few niceties that the place sorely lacked. Contactors were hired and work would commence over the winter: they were happy to have the work, most of it indoors.

Two days before Christmas Lestat called. "_Joyeux Noël_, Brian."

"Merry Christmas." I said a little breathlessly. "How are things going?"

"Very well, indeed." he murmured and I heard his throaty purr over the phone. "Are you still visiting your family?"

No. I'm in the Berkshires."

"Do you think you might get here by Christmas Day?" The contentment in his voice resonated even over the telephone.

"Not a problem. I'll drive back to Boston and fly up sometime tomorrow."

"_Très bon. Nous vous verrons alors_."

"Right." I said, already feeling the anticipation creeping in. "I'm glad things are working out."

"As am I." He said with a warm chuckle. "Louis said to tell you to drive carefully." He chuckled again. "Bon soir, Brian."

~~~~~

I arrived in the late afternoon. There was a fresh blanket of powder on the ground, fallen early in the day, but the clouds had broken and the westering sun heliographed redly off the floor-to-ceiling windows that graced the front of the chalet. I let myself in and immediately noted that everything looked much as it had when I'd left nearly three weeks earlier. I wondered if the bedroom had fared as well. The room smelled pleasantly of balsam, emanating from the massive tree set up before the window. I took a little time to get a fire going in the grate and to admire the Christmas tree festooned with lights and groaning under the weight of the glass ornaments hung upon its branches.

I didn't look in on them, even though I most sincerely wanted to. The bedroom door faced the western windows, still glowing in the sunset and darting spears of light off the glass ornaments on the tree. I hung up my jacket and put my wet boots in the closet and went to the kitchen to brew some coffee. By the time I'd poured myself a cup, the sun had set.

"It smells good out here." Lestat said from the bedroom doorway. He stood there without a stitch of clothing on, a supremely satisfied look on his face. Louis appeared behind him, snaking his arms around Lestat's waist and nuzzling his neck.

"It smells good here." Louis murmured. He pushed Lestat and they crossed the room arranging themselves on the couch. Distinctly dizzy, I sat down in a chair by the fire before my legs could give out. They looked insanely happy and beyond beautiful.

"You are staring." Louis murmured, licking delicately at a spot just below Lestat's ear. He moved his left hand up to caress Lestat's chest and the firelight glanced off a ring he wore on his third finger. Platinum, by the look of it. I noticed then that Lestat, too, wore a ring on his left hand, a wide, gold band.

"You had a wedding and didn't invite me?" I said. I felt an absurd pang.

"A private ceremony, if you will." Louis said. "But here you are now, and we will celebrate together, oui?" Lestat had quantities of food delivered yesterday evening, though I imagine there is but one nourishment you would wish to taste."

He smiled, then and Lestat turned his head to press a languid, warm kiss to Louis' mouth and that action caused them to twine together and continue their kissing for a little while, unmindful of me or anything else. When they at last released one another, Lestat looked over at me.

"Well, aren't you going to say something?"

"What happened?" I asked, feverish to find out, feverish with watching them.

"We came out from the dark side." Louis said enigmatically.

NEXT: 1995


	7. Darkside - 1995

### 

Darkside   
Part 6 -1995

March, 1995

 

In mid-February, Lestat and Louis received an invitation to a masquerade ball. After some discussion, they decided that they would attend and I set to work tracking down a costume designer from California that Lestat knew of. After a bit of negotiation, she and her entourage were engaged to come to New Orleans to work with Lestat and Louis on their chosen outfits. They've written about this and I know I put my two cents in as well, but I thought I'd add a few details this time around.

I remember thinking that their relationship had coalesced into something different. They exhibited a sort of bantering playfulness that was totally unlike the barbed, dagger-like thrusts of wit that they would trade when they argued. Even before the problems burgeoned, the repartee was different, though I would be hard pressed to explain exactly what that means; it's just something I felt. Since Christmas and whatever had happened in that cabin in Vermont, there was between them a quiet ebullience floating atop a deep well of contentment. It was evident in their teasing manner with the costumers and in the choice of their outfits. I saw it in the looks they exchanged and in a hand lingering upon the sleeve or the nape or the small of the back. Most of all, I felt it; the departure of the tension that had been so thick and oppressive.

On the evening of the party I settled myself in one of the wing chairs to watch Louis being dressed. Marge had taken Lestat off to the bedroom to work on him; as always, he wished to make an entrance. Louis dressed himself for the most part which was probably a good thing because Clive, who was supposed to be helping him, was a bundle of nerves. I thought I knew why and it was more than the fascinating sight of Louis wearing actual underwear.

It was Louis' skin. I don't understand how anyone can look at him as he is now and not see that he is not human. Even pinked with what must have been quite a meal, his pallor was unusual and never mind the smooth texture of his skin. Lestat had said in passing once that he often used the force of his mind to lull the mortals near him when he moved among them and so I assumed that Louis did something similar, though it seemed that his concentration slipped now and again and it was then that Clive exhibited nervous behavior.

He calmed as Louis' flesh was covered by the rich, beautiful fabrics. He helped Louis to fasten the shirt properly and tied the intricate bows at the bottom of the full pants, or whatever the hell they were called, just below Louis' knees. Louis slipped his feet into the high-heeled shoes and stepped gracefully from the platform. Clive's assistant, a young girl with a mousy little face attended to Louis' hair with a curling iron since he had chosen to eschew the towering periwig that was a part of his costume and when she finished she held Louis' jacket for him as he put his arms into the sleeves. He thanked her and she nodded, smiling at him. She was much less nervous than Clive was, that was certain.

 

Louis buckled a wide leather belt and scabbard about his hips and drew the short sword. The gems in on the handle winked in the light and the blade gleamed wickedly. He murmured something under his breath and sheathed the sword with a smooth, practiced motion. Clive handed him a large, plumed had, upswept on one side and Louis took it and held it at his side.

"What think you, Brian?" he asked.

"You look like you stepped out of a painting." I told him. "And a lot better than what I can recall about Louis XIV."

"Such things you say." Louis said with a sweep of lashes and turned to face Clive. "My thanks, Clive. Beautiful work indeed." He inclined his head graciously.

There was a resounding crash from the guest bedroom where Lestat was being attended to, followed by a muffled shriek and a series of rapid-fire orders from the redoubtable Marge. Louis smiled.

"It would appear that Lestat is ready." He said, drawing himself up regally. There was a small commotion in the hall and then Lestat appeared in the doorway.

I wish I could describe Louis' expression, but I was too thunderstruck to even glance over at him. Lestat's transformation was so startling that it bordered on hallucinatory.

"_Ma chére Louise_." Louis murmured. Lestat dropped into a deep curtsey before Louis.

"_Votre Majesté Royale_." Lestat replied.

The gown was a shimmering royal blue and it fitted him perfectly. Lace frothed at the neckline, providing the appearance of a bosom. His hair was swept up off of his neck and secured with jeweled pins; soft, curled tendrils framed his face. Louis drew him up as I watched and I finally took a look at his face. He gazed with rapt fascination at Lestat.

"You are a vision, my love." Louis said.

They looked at one another with frank admiration, each enchanted with the different version of the other.

"Madame, your work is unparalleled." Lestat pronounced as Marge stepped up and adjusted Louis' jacket.

"Thank you." she said, simply. She was clearly pleased with her efforts. "Those are earbobs for Madame." She said to Louis. He opened his hand and examined the little sapphire drops.

"_Merci, madame_." he said, stepping to Lestat. "If you allow me, my beauty?"

Lestat smiled and turned his head to present an ear. He caught sight of me. "You may close your mouth, Brian. Gaping does you no credit."

I shut my mouth with a snap, unaware that I'd been so foolishly gawping. "I can't believe it." I said, still stunned by how he looked. He snapped his fan open and fluttered it before his face.

"I'd forgotten about fans." Louis said. "How tiresome it all was. Darling, you must not hide your face from me."

Lestat closed the fan and released it, letting it dangle from his wrist.

"Are we ready to go?" I asked. "I'll go get the car."

"Not necessary." Lestat said. "We have engaged a larger car to come by shortly. Surely you were not thinking of attending the ball without a costume?"

"What?"

"Costume." he said imperiously. "You must change immediately."

"A little surprise." Louis said helpfully. Marge had already taken my elbow to lead me from the room. "Happy Birthday, by the way."

And so I was dressed in my turn, put into clothing that I was unused to; breeches and heavy boots and a fine linen shirt with lace at the cuffs. There was lace at my neck and a beautiful crimson jacket, flared at the hips and deep in the cuffs; the hem reached my knees. It was strange, looking in the mirror and seeing myself in such clothes. Clive settled a heavy, curled wig on my head and topped that off with a large hat.

"There! What do you think? You look very piratical." Marge said. Clive handed me a belt with a scabbard. "This should ride on your hips." He told me, fussing with the lace at my throat. "I think the cutlass is in the parlour with les messiuers"

"Cutlass?" I said, laughing.

"It's all about the details." Marge said. "How do the boots feel?"

"Fine. Heavy, but they fit well."

"Well, go on, then. They are very anxious to see you, you know."

I took the short walk down the hall feeling outrageously self-conscious and when I stepped into the parlour, I felt the tips of my ears burning as the flush rose to my face.

"Ah, the transformation! How marvelous!" Lestat said, clearly pleased. "You see, Louis? He wears the look very well, just as I said." He swept toward me and ran a bejeweled hand down the sleeve of my jacket.

"He does indeed." Louis agreed. "What do you think of our surprise, cher?"

"I feel like Captain Morgan." I said with a laugh.

"Who?" Louis asked.

"Never mind. Thank you both. This is amazing."

"And here is your cutlass, Brian, though I believe such weapons must be transported in the trunk of the car."

Clive presented the gleaming cutlass to me, handle first, He held the blade in the folds of a soft cloth. I took it, marveling at the workmanship on the handle and the deep red jewel winking from the pommel. It had heft and substance and the wickedly sharp edge glittered in deadly promise.

"It's quite sharp." Lestat said, as Clive took it back gingerly and swaddled it in the cloth. "You want to be careful with it. Still, you never know when such a thing proves useful."

"I'll keep it in the scabbard. I don't imagine we are going to this party to slaughter the guests."

Lestat leaned forward as Marge and the others went down the stairs. "Like I said. You never know!" Behind him, Louis smiled indulgently.

"There is the matter of your other gift to him, non?" Louis said.

"Ah, yes, of course. I left it in the refrigerator earlier, Brian. To fortify you." He said, with a significant lift of his fair brows. "I am told it will take will take me a little time to settle into the car so as not to crease this confection of a gown, so you have a little time to fetch it." He smiled winningly and my heart turned over.

I never knew when Lestat would offer me one of those tiny sips of his blood—there was no set time, no mood that gave me any sort of clue and so I assumed he gave it to me at his own whim. The only thing I had noticed was that there was usually a separation of weeks between these precious draughts. This time it had been just under a week.

A birthday present.

The little bottle was cold in my hand and I curled my fingers around it to warm it. Did it taste different when it pulsed, warm from his body? I shivered at the thought. I didn't have time to contemplate as I usually did; they waited for me. I drank.

I have described my little ritual and the effects of those little drinks. It's not easy to find the right words; analogies are never quite right. I know what I've said makes the experience sound like a drug and in a way it is like that but without the attendant distortions. There is an acute clarity that affects all the senses and there is the distinct and unmistakable feeling of something living and alien moving under my skin, mingling greedily with my blood.

After a few minutes, I went outside and was treated to the sight of Louis handing Lestat into the car with Marge already within arranging the voluminous folds of the gown. A pair of tourists stood to by the lamppost, gawking at the spectacle and snapping photographs. One of them spotted me and said, "Shirl, here's another one!" as though we were all part of a spectacle put on for their benefit which, in a way, I suppose we were. Shirl was polite, though, and asked if she could take a picture. Before I could answer, Louis straightened up from his crouch.

"You must certainly take Brian's picture." he said magnanimously. "It's his birthday, you know."

"Louis?" Lestat said from the darkness of the limo. The camera flashed in my face and I blinked. Everything seemed entirely too loud and frenetic.

"Happy birthday!" Shirl said pleasantly. "You all look fantastic!"

The man with her spoke up. "Hey! That's a guy in that dress! Shirl!"

Shirl poked him in the side with an elbow and gave an embarrassed smile. "He doesn't mean anything by that." I shrugged, slightly overwhelmed by the way the gaslight that hung from the underside of the balcony seemed to be throwing out arrows of light.

"Of course he doesn't." Louis said pleasantly, though his eyes had a mildly dangerous glint. "Come, Brian. We'll be late." I nodded and followed him into the back of the limo. There was plenty of room once I squeezed past Lestat and his gown. I sat near the back of the car and Louis took his place beside Lestat.

Marge stuck her head in. "You be careful when you get out, hear me?"

"I most certainly do." Lestat said, smiling. "I shall be very careful. Many thanks, Madame."

The driver looked in. "All set?"

"We are." Louis said. The driver nodded and closed the door and a moment later, we pulled smoothly away from the curb. They were quiet for the moment, both watching me. Lestat wore an amused expression, not at all unexpected for I was barely able to keep still. I glanced from his face to Louis' and watched, fascinated as his tongue twisted and curled in his half-opened mouth. He was, I realized with sudden sureness, drawing in the scent of Lestat's blood and even as I had the thought, he reached for Lestat's gloved hand, squeezing it hard enough so that Lestat made a sudden, surprised gasping sound.

"Where are we going, anyway?" I asked, still watching Louis' mouth with dazed fascination.

"Metairie." Lestat said. "Didn't I tell you? Marius is our host. Be easy, Brian. You'll have a good time. We shall see to that. And there will be other mortals in attendance. Marius always did have a wide array of friends."

And so we went and I had a good time that night and that stuff was all documented, more or less and those things that have not yet been told will no doubt come out eventually.

 

### 

June, 1995

 

I had just finished watering the potted plants on the back patio when I heard the doorbell. I went into the blessed coolness and hurried to the front, thinking it was UPS or some other delivery service bringing God knows what for Lestat. He'd discovered online shopping and ever since there had been a steady stream of parcels showing up, usually in the late afternoon.

Not this time, though. The visitor was a black man holding a jacket over his arm. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man with a white beard and wrinkles at the corners of his turquoise eyes. When I opened the door, he took the cap he wore off his head, revealing a cap of short, iron gray hair. Behind him at the curb was one of the mule drawn carriages that you see taking the tourists around on tours of the Quarter.

"I'm Rémy Didier. Las' night Mr. Louis left his jacket." He jerked a calloused thumb at the carriage behind him and handed the jacket to me.

"Thank you. I'll be sure and tell him that you found it. He's…"

"Still sleeping, him." he finished. I cocked my head.

"Why don't you come on in and have something cool to drink? Least I can do for your time and all." I looked over at his mule. "And some water for him while he waits, maybe?"

He relaxed then and smiled. "I'll get his bucket."

After the mule was given his water, Didier walked back to the kitchen with me.

"My name's Brian." I said, offering my hand. He took it in his and gave a warm squeeze in lieu of the usual handshake. We sat down at the table.

"Seen you around," he said after a while. "Livin' out back, you?"

"For a few years now, yeah." I took a swallow of the cool tea. "You know Mr. Louis, I take it?" I said as nonchalantly as I could. He didn't smile but the skin around his eyes crinkled just the smallest amount.

"Since I was a boy." he said, pretty much laying his cards on the table. "My father did work for him back then."

I wondered sometimes just how many people were aware of them. More than I would have thought at first. After all, they'd stayed here in this place for decades, unchanging while everyone around them grew older. It was inevitable that some people would notice.

"Back then he lived alone. Sometimes here, but mos'ly over on Toulouse." He finished his tea and I gestured to the pitcher. He nodded and I poured him some more. "Now you wondrin' why I'm tellin' you , eh? Simple enough. Just so you know there's others that do some lookin' out. I know what they are, me. Yeah. I know there's another side to all that. Mr. Louis always been good to my family." He stood up and I was struck again at his physical presence. We walked back out to the front. "Tell Mr. Louis I was by." He shook my hand this time. "Go on to Vaughn's some night. I'm buyin' the beer."

I watched him hook the bucket to the back of his rig and he climbed up on the high seat. "Come on, now, Clerance. Time for us to get back to work." He raised a hand as Clerance pulled the heavy carriage away from the curb. I watched them go down the street.

Later when they emerged from their room, I gave Louis the jacket and Rémy Didier's message.

"He said he's known you since he was a boy." I said carefully. Louis nodded.

"I've known generations of Rémy's family." he said. Lestat stepped up behind him and slid his hands around Louis' waist.

"Louis watches out for his extended family in his way." Lestat said, rubbing his cheek against the side of Louis' head. "Perhaps he will tell you about it sometime."

"Perhaps." Louis said in a very non-committal way. "Come, 'Stat. We'll be late for the film."

And that was that. Such things happened often, and sometimes I would hear more on a subject and sometimes I wouldn't. It seemed more to do with timing and catching one or the other of them alone. When they were together, it was difficult to keep either of them focused on anything other than each other after any length of time had passed.

As for Didier himself, we became friends of a sort as years passed and although he seemed fine with the knowledge of what Louis and Lestat were, he retained a reverential awe about them that prevented his being at all comfortable on the premises, even during the day. Our contact was usually at Vaughn's as he had suggested that day and he and his wife asked me to their home for dinner several times a year. They had a small place over on St. Villiere in Tremé, neat and welcoming and I liked spending time with them .

Lestat's remark about extended family was not brought up again any time soon and I thought that Didier himself was unaware of any such link.

Then again, I could be wrong.

 

### 

Conclusion

 

The masquerade ball was more or less where they began any narrative that included me and where I added my own perspective to what goes on in this corner of the world. It's time, then, for me to close my wandering additions to what happened before. Before I end this though, there's a few things I'd like to say about New Orleans and my life to this point.

New Orleans is madness and color, sound and pageantry. Tastes burst upon the tongue, spicy and hot or intangibly sublime. Music is her heart and her soul and it's rooted in pain and joy, blood and life, sorrow and sweetness all bound up in African rhythms and Caribbean color and the ingenuity and burgeoning life of a relatively new country. Louisiana's southern drawl is languid music and the Cajun flair for expression has its own bright cadence. It's an old city and a poor one on the American scale for such things, so it has more than it's fair share of crime and corruption, racism and grinding poverty. These elements color New Orleans and add to her complexity, adding an underlying cynical bitterness that belies the never-ending party the tourists believe in.

There are parties, though. Lots of them. There are parades and festivals and celebrations for ethnicity and music and culture; Southern Decadence and Jazz Fest, Mardi Gras Indians and Second Line dances, street theater, Saints football and scam artists. Exuberant expressions in all imaginable artistic mediums; light and dark, deep or shallow, but always expressive.

The humid air is redolent with scent. Sweet jasmine, crawfish boil, rotted fish, mule piss, strawberries and melons, beer, fried oysters—and over it all is the thundery, wet, overpowering scent of the Mississippi and Ponchartrain and all the lakes and waterways, inlets and bayous that surround the city.

I love this place; it is more my home than the place I was born ever was. I love the damp crumbling brick and the mint that grows in the cracks of the carrriageway; I love the gracious old homes and the scrolled ironwork and I love the people that I live among.

Most of all I love the dark side of my life here, the mysterious night and the two beings that illuminate it. I love their gilded, deadly continuity and I love the way they love each other and the odd, sometimes off-hand, sometimes intimate inclusion they have given me. Many might think I am not quite right, perhaps not sane and I guess they might be right in some ways yet--there are others in this city who share the secret. The amalgam of culture and tradition seem to demand the secret be kept and I see that others covet their knowledge much as I do. Those that do not hold their knowledge close disappear more often than not. For my part, my knowledge is held close out of my own love for them. I often say that I could not leave them and that is a simple truth. Neither could I leave this tropical, beautiful, raucous, dirty city.

I love the dark side.

BC  
March, 2005

FIN

**Author's Note:**

> It should be noted that I work within canon up until _Memnoch the Devil_ skipping _Merrick_ altogether and including _The Vampire Armand_. I have not read _Merrick_ or the rest of the VC novels so any characters/canon from that period play no part in the Odyssey series (of which _Darkside is a part_).
> 
> Brian Callahan is an original character, a window on the world that Lestat and Louis inhabit; he operates as a sort of assistant/agent/liason for the vampires. He has an elevated position in that he interacts with them and loves them, but beyond that I've done my best not to Mary Sue him.


End file.
